Category: Reflections

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         Just like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand.
                  —Jeremiah 18.6

         Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me
         cannot be my disciple.
         None of you can become my disciple
         if you do not give up all your possessions.
                  —Luke 14. 27, 33

What you cling to is not household goods,
that’s not likely what you need to let go of.

What you carry is not the silver cross, stylish,
matching your outfit, fitting well with your life already.

Not the wooden one, stained with blood and drama,
not the annoyance, the “cross to bear.”

No: enter the suffering of the world;
bear it one person at a time.

Accept the weight of powerlessness, and its power;
surrender your own way that you want to get.

Let the potter reshape you
into a form not of your choosing,

a life that’s not yours,
a struggle not for you to win.

What you let go of may seem as life itself.
Let the new life be given to you.

The little cry of grief
is the weight of the hand on the clay.

         
         
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

Lord,

drown out our noise
in the thunder of your silence.

Wash away these chattering thoughts
in the sea roar of your wordless presence.

Erase our shouts and incantations,
the carnival barkers of my prayers.

Flood me with the river of you,
water up to ceilings, houses carried off.

Saturate this world with your silence
and hide it in every little thing.

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

To receive Unfolding Light by daily email, write to me at unfoldinglight (at-sign) hotmail dot com.

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
The seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.
                  — Deuteronomy 5. 14-15

There was a time when people came at the Sabbath as a day of obligations, anxiously obeying rules and avoiding all sorts of things that might be classified as “work.” But it’s a day off­ from obligations, a day of freedom. The Sabbath was the first general labor strike, the first Labor Day Holiday. And it was weekly! Pretty radical, if you think about it: a day of rest for slaves. And it is extended even to foreigners and animals. What a wonderful way to worship God: sit around and do nothing.

God is not interested in what you accomplish, how hard you work, whether you earn your keep or pay your way. You are not defined by your job. So relax. Take a day off. Enter into the impossibility of your deserving God’s grace. On this day the lazy rich and the laborer, the unemployed and the one who works three jobs are all the same: the beloved of God, set free just because God loves them that way.

Have a restful day.
         
         
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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         “When you are invited to a wedding banquet,
         do not sit down at the place of honor…
         but go and sit down at the lowest place.”
                  —Luke 14. 8, 10
         

   
Lord,

I come to your table washed
of deserving, of measure,
of worth, but lovingly invited.

I take the lowest place
so that this day may be
pure gift, pure gift.

I take the lowest place because
I am here not to surpass my neighbors
but to love them.

I take the lowest place because
I wish to sit close to you,
where you always sit.

I take the lowest place
because I love to watch my bridegroom
search the room and come for me.

__________________
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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.

         
         
To this one grief do not succumb at last–
unlike so many losses, all that tearing,
all the deaths of things that must be passed,
the vital griefs from which you learn by bearing.
Yes, when your child gets on that bus you weep,
trailing pages of your loose-leaf heart,
the rough handwritten story you can’t keep.
How small the steps with which your light departs!
But you grieve not for her–she will return–
but for that soul for whom all things are new,
that child who still can wonder, risk and learn,
the part that you don’t want to lose of you.
So do not let that grief, that death be true:
no, let the new adventurer be you.

____________________

Weather Report

Parting,
—as friends, or as clouds—
clearing throughout the day.
Local incidents of surrender
will build to a low pressure area
where some drops will fall,
but not enough to cause erosion.

         
         
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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.

Fifty years ago today a quarter million people came to march on Washington demanding jobs and freedom. Some would say the same thing needs to happen again: the scourges of racism, militarism and corporate greed still plague us; the progress made since then has been mixed, and still easily erodes. That day violence was expected, but there was none. The marchers were peaceful and hopeful. They were not seething, they were dreaming; Martin’s dream was already theirs. It was a large and powerful event? but it began with only a few people who themselves had a dream. They acted on that dream, and the Spirit took it from there.

What they did is a little different from what we do on Sunday mornings, but not much. We lift up a dream? God’s dream of how we shall live together, a dream that Jesus called the Kingdom of God. And in our dreaming, in our devoting ourselves to that dream, we bring it a little closer. To fulfill that dream will take as much struggle as dreaming, as much sacrifice as believing, but it starts with the dream, the dream the Holy One gives us of a world of love and justice. We don’t gather in worship to “recharge our batteries:” we come to lift up God’s dream for the world and to be shaped by that dream and to devote ourselves to it and to renew our energy to work for it. The words of the prophets, the miracles of Christ, the vision of the Palms, the life embodied in the early church, all proclaim God’s vision for a new order. It’s radical, world-changing stuff.

This Sunday, watch and listen for the Gospel’s march on this world. If you don’t see it, well, maybe you need to march on your church.

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.

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.

         When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled,
         the lame, and the blind; and you will be blessed,
         because they cannot repay you.
                  —Luke 14. 13-14

Last Sunday was the anniversary of the ratification in 1920 of the 19th Amendment, “granting” women the right to vote. Wednesday is the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington, which led to the Civil Rights Act, enabling blacks to vote. In both cases, laws giving disenfranchised people the power to vote came only after much long, hard struggle, against fierce, violent resistance. It seems we don’t mind giving away a little money, but the hardest thing to share is power. The struggle continues. People complain about the poor having an “entitlement mentality,” but no one acts more entitled than rich, white, powerful people.

Christ did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but in self-emptying became a humble servant. Jesus asks us to surrender our entitlement, share our power and use our privilege for the sake of those who do not have it. Surrendering security, superiority and control is the hardest thing to do— but sharing power is powerful. To invite the poor to a banquet, or to choose a lower place at the table, is not simply an act of kindness; it is a radical way of upending social power structures by giving your power away, making someone of lower status equal to yourself. This is what it means to carry the cross, to share power and vulnerability for the sake of the powerless and vulnerable.

The humble, crucified Christ calls us to find our place not at the privileged end of the table, but among the poor. For we are poor indeed, and only when we take that seriously do we really “get” the grace of God. We are called to welcome the dispossessed to our table, to grant to all people a place of privilege, power and belonging. Only there, in equally shared need and power and glory, do we really enjoy the Banquet of God.
         
         
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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         “I relieved your shoulder of the burden;
                  your hands were freed from the basket.
         In distress you called, and I rescued you;
                  I answered you in the secret place of thunder;
                  I tested you at the waters of Meribah….

         Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.”
                           —Psalm 81.6-7

Beloved,
even in my freedom
I don’t know how you’ve freed me;
I don’t feel the weight of the burdens
I don’t feel.
The place of thunder
where you have answered me,
and even its thunder
is secret from me.
I’ve been tested in ways I didn’t know,
rescued in ways beyond me.

I only know
that I open the mouth of my heart

and wait.

         
         
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

Mysterious Lover,
hearer of my prayers,
prayer of whom I am your voice,

save me from fulfillment,
the plea of answers,
the curse of final rest:

no, awaken here
as your deep longing
that is me.

______________________
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.

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
After one month, 4718 miles, 12 states, 11 beds, and visits with 19 family members, we are home. And what did the bear see on the other side of the mountain?

The world goes on. And on and on. Beyond every road, every ten-lane turnpike and two-strand wagon trail, runs another road. Every place you go, and beyond, there is another place, another town, or space between towns, a teeming metropolis or an isolated farmhouse, and people live there. Or something else lives there. For someone, that is home. From where I live to the desert and the tundra, from mountain top to dark sea bottom, there is life living its life, in all its uncatalogable variety. And there are people being beautiful in a million different ways. And there is God’s grace, in all its even greater variety, doing its thing. Whatever is, is in God. And as I look up into a night sky far from cities where I can actually see the stars, they, too, in their silent, mysterious distances, are still in God.

Whatever your day brings, whatever new or familiar experiences come your way, whether you find yourself in a great throng or all alone (or both), know that the One is with you, that Blessing upholds you, that the Presence includes you. No matter where you are, in space or in mind, you are not far away. You are at home in God. Welcome.
         
         
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