Category: Reflections

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         
         The commandment we have from God is this:
         those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.
         And God’s commandments are not burdensome,
         for whatever is born of God conquers the world.
                  —1 John 4.21, 5.3-4

However daunting it may seem to face the world’s suffering and evil, don’t fall for the illusion of the power of empires, or of the smallness of your life. A far greater power enfolds us, the power that creates the universe, that raises the dead, that transforms all the world bit by bit. The law of God is not the sort that we may obey or disobey. It’s The Way Things Are—more like the law of gravity: universal, unfailing, absolute and without exception. You can live in harmony with it or fight it, but it will prevail. It conquers the world. It is no impersonal “Force” that you can use; it’s the living presence of The Holy One, whose power is hidden in loving kindness.

What conquers the world is what created it: God’s pure, self-giving love. What conquers the world will not appear as the victory of armies, the domination of empires or the capture of market share. It will be hidden in the restoration of the human heart, in people’s return to one another and to the root of their being, in the human family falling in love with life. To love is not a burden; it’s the secret key to the deepest joy, to participating in what makes the world real.

God’s presence is the root of your soul. God pours love into your heart breath by breath. Receive that grace, and let it fill you to overflowing. Don’t worry how long it takes to start a galaxy spinning. Don’t expect a miracle on the scale of the re-creation of the universe to occur visibly within your lifetime. But neither doubt that the world is being re-created, bit by bit, nor that sometimes, for a moment, you may catch a glimpse of resurrection. Trust the infinite, miraculous power of love. Love your neighbors, and you join in a great miracle that even now, without their knowing it, conquers the world.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         
         I have said these things to you
         so that my joy may be in you,
         and that your joy may be complete.
         This is my commandment,
         that you love one another as I have loved you.
         No one has greater love than this,
         to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
                  —John 15.11-13

Two great energies stand side by side,
dance together in harmony:
the dark readiness to die,
the befriending of loss, risk and suffering—
and beside this somber pledge,
deep joy, complete joy,
the joy of a lover with her beloved.

A martyr’s a fraud who’s not happy to go.

Once you find your delight
in your neighbor’s well-being,
you are never far from the road to joy.
The opportunities for parties are endless!
Any moment, you can bless someone
undeserving, and there you are—
celebrating again!

Lay down your mortal life,
your little scrap of cloth,
and you are left with nothing at all
but the infinite delight of God.

When the little cage of your life
is battered and smashed,
out flies the bird
that never stops singing.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.

         
After a big church fight like the United Methodist Church just had, people sometimes ask the losers why they stay in a denomination– or sometimes even with congregations– when they have such deep differences. Why not leave them and join up with more like-minded people? Well, you stay because they’re your people. You stay because Jesus’ commandment wasn’t to agree with each other, but to live with each other.

We are a part of this great, messy organism of the human community, and all the little messy parts of it, like families, and congregations, and denominations. We don’t get to opt out. We don’t get to pick and choose our neighbors. We don’t get to vet whom we love and whom we avoid. That was the issue when Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan, in response to the question, “Who is my neighbor?” The answer is, whoever you meet up with, especially the ones you think aren’t, and wish weren’t, your neighbor. Especially them.

Despite various calls for doctrinal conformity, what binds us together in the church is not our choices but God’s. God makes up the church; we don’t. What unites us is not our mutual assent to similar ideas, but our love for each other. We participate in God’s love for everyone. It’s love precisely because it bridges our differences. It is love because it is rooted in God’s care for everyone, regardless of how good or right or at home we feel among them. The same is true of our families, and the whole human family: we are One, whether we like it or not. So we might as well practice liking it, and living with each other.

The willingness to extend care and even to embody unity with those who are different from us seems like a challenge– but isn’t that what love is? Love is a commitment to the well-being of the Other, and the deepest love is toward one who is very much other. “Loving” someone who is essentially a projection of myself is hardly love at all. Loving someone who is really, really different—now that’s love.

So we stay in families and churches order to love the people who drive us nuts, the people who we believe are betraying Jesus and his love, the very ones he died for. We may not be doing it well. But we’re definitely getting a lot of practice. God help us.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve
______________________
Copyright © Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.

If you want to understand God
walk up to a blooming lilac
and hide your face in the light purple.

Gather all the memories of that scent
from your childhood.
(Don’t confuse the roses at your grave.)

Imagine giving that aroma to someone.
Imagine them receiving it.

Now, you still don’t understand God.
But what you do
is enough.

___________________

Weather Report

Softly,
with increasing blue
throughout the mystified day,
deepening toward evening
into a kind of leaning.
Clearing,
with a slight chance of visibility.
Very slight.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower.
He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit.
Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.
                  —John 15.1-2

Even the greatest tree
under which we found shelter
can fail us. They do not live forever.

In times of death, loss or betrayal,
times when what was fruitful is barren,
when what was strong has withered,
when what once blossomed is hard and dry,
when what was generous and nourishing
is thorny and hurtful,
the vinegrower, lover of life and joy,
tender of kindness and blessing,
weeps.
He does not punish, but gently tends.
Even if most of the tree is dead,
it is pruned to save what is living,
what is kind and hopeful and giving.
But how can he not weep, as he cuts off
limbs of his own flesh?

You will imagine those whom you hope
God is cutting off at this very moment,
but I don’t mean others.
I mean in you, the part in each of us
that is unloving, ungiving,
whatever is attached to what is dead.
The death of what is unkind in us
is the pruning by which
the resurrection of love
may come forth, small and green.

In a dying vine
even the smallest tender shoot
is the deepest hope of the vinegrower.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         
         As God is, so are we in this world.
         There is no fear in love,
         but perfect love casts out fear;
         for fear has to do with punishment,
         and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.
                  —1 John 4. 18

The God you fear does not exist.
The God who would send you to hell,
who would punish you for your past,
is a figment of fear.
God is love,
and there is no punishment in God.
On the cross Jesus has shown us
how God attends to our sin:
not by punishing us for it, but
by loving us in it, and suffering for it,
so that the infinite power of love
can cast out the fear that is our sin.

Do not be afraid,
nor cause another to be afraid.
Trust in God’s love.
Be at peace, and let God’s perfect love
be in you.
As God is, so may you be in this world.
This is how you are perfected in love:
not that your love is perfect,
but that God’s perfect love is in you.
Surrender to it, and be at peace.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love…. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another…. Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.
                  —1 John 4. 7-8, 11, 20-21

The word “love” appears 28 times in this passage from 1 John. Can there be any doubt that the heart of Christianity is to love as Christ has loved us? It is not to believe certain things, to be right about doctrinal matters, but to love. You may argue about theology with someone who is totally wrong, but unless you do it with love, you’re totally wrong. You can’t condemn those who are evil; all you can do is love them. The talk you will hear about God “hating” certain sinners is nothing more than a sad projection of people’s hate onto God. God is love, not hate. God is not even a little love watered down with some judgment and hate, but pure, infinite unconditional love. And faith means living in that love, with that love, unconditionally.

I think of my friends and colleagues at our General Conference these days, the global gathering of United Methodists we hold every four years. We argue about things like rules and budgets and church structure and, of course, homosexuality. (Webster: church, n. A group of people who hear about love and argue about sex and money.) There always seems to be a lot of fear at those gatherings, a lot of judgment, a lot of anger (I’ve been to four of them). I bet Jesus is sad.

Friends, it’s not about being right. It’s not about winning the argument. It’s not about preserving the institution of the church. It’s about loving people. Loving bigots and queers and tyrants and welfare queens and children and child soldiers and child molesters and neighbors and strangers and ourselves, like Jesus did, even loving those who you believe are destroying the church, or the world. If we don’t love, love actually, in practice, for real—then the rest of or faith is just cheap wrapping paper and we should throw it away.

Practice love today. Stand for justice, speak the truth, embrace the outcast, cry out for the voiceless, confront the powers, sound the trumpets so the walls may come down; but do it with love. That alone will cleanse our souls, reform the church, and save the world. Love as the crucified Christ has loved us, and you will know resurrection.
      
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         

Does the branch pray to the tree?

Does the little limb think
of the great root buried in its grave,
the wine poured up
through the sturdy chalice of the trunk?
Does the leaf seek the will
of the seed, or contemplate
the shape of the body,
the arms spread out over the earth?
Does the bud seek guidance
or understand its place
in the miracles and teachings of the seasons?

I don’t know about that;
only this:

in the branch the leaf opens,
the blossom unfolds,
the fruit swells.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         

Heaven is a shy bird.

If you march out and demand a song
you will hear nothing.

But sit still for a long time,
again and again, and let your waiting
spread a safe, green meadow of silence,

and because you have waited—
not for your own sake but for her—
she will sing.

         

         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
       
When we pray for God our shepherd to lead us, we usually have green pastures in mind. But when Peter and James healed a paralytic, preached to the crowd, and testified to the authorities who arrested them, they didn’t do this out of their own personal desire; they did it because God led them to. God didn’t exactly lead them beside still waters.

Our lives are richest in blessing, peace and vibrancy when we live not according to our own impulses, but in harmony with God’s grace. Whether it is toward peaceful rest or challenging action, God leads us from within, guiding, nudging, sometimes compelling us, and leads us from without, alluring, beckoning, pleading, needing us. We much prefer going our own way, of course? so we do what we can to ignore God’s shepherding. One way is to believe that God is on our side, so that we don’t feel the need to listen to God. We already know. Another way is to limit our faith to ideas, so that we can “believe” without actually acting. Another escape is to be busy, so that we believe we can’t afford to slow down as much as is needed to listen to God. Many believers are so sure and busy that if God really is a shepherd, they’re atheists.

You will not likely know God’s will for your life by pushing hard. You’re more likely to find out by listening for the voice of your shepherd and following. Whether you feel the need to stand up and act or lie down and rest, let God shepherd you. Let the Spirit within you and in others speak to you. Let God’s “rod and staff” gently lead you. Rather than deciding where you ought to be, discern where your shepherd is, and be there. Renounce all your ideas of where God ought to lead you. Let the shepherd decide. In stillness, listen. In openness, wait to hear. In humble trust, resolve to follow the shepherd before you know where he’s going.

Don’t resist when the shepherd leads you either to pastures greener than you think you deserve or valleys darker than you think you can handle. If you are with your shepherd, you are in the right place. You are in “the house of the Lord.” Listen, trust and follow. And don’t worry about saving the world. That’s God’s job. Neither shrink back in despair nor run ahead on your own; just stay with the shepherd. Just show up and take your place in the flock, where God needs you. Surely goodness and mercy will follow you all the days of your life.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve
______________________
Copyright © Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net