Category: Reflections

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         

As Pharaoh drew near, the Israelites looked back, and there were the Egyptians advancing on them. In great fear the Israelites cried out to the Lord. They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness?” … But the Israelites walked on dry ground through the sea…
         — Exodus 14.10-11, 29

A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”
         —Mark 4. 37-38

We walk through the valley of the shadow of death. We strain at the oars of our little boat against a tempestuous sea. We wake in the darkest depths of the night. We suffer difficulties, losses, even despair. And through it all the Infinite Presence, the One who Accompanies Us, whispers in our hearts, “Peace. Be still. This is not where the story ends. Yours is not a story of tragedy, of life diminished into misery and meaninglessness. Yours is a story of abundant life, slowly unfolding. It is a process, a journey. This is merely a passage. I am bringing you through this narrow place into a broad and spacious place. I am bringing you through this valley of tears to a meadow of rejoicing. You cannot arrive without first traveling. You must walk this path, and pass through these dark places. There are rough steps along the way. But I am leading you out of this place into another. Every step, even the fearful ones, even those of suffering and loss, are steps by which I come with you closer to the place of your deepest delight. Your pain is real, and I do not begrudge your despair. But trust this: whether or not you feel it, I am with you. Every step toward blessing is blessing. Walk with me, and let the walking itself give you courage.” And so, picking up the little bundle of our hearts, we go, hand in hand with the Loving Mystery, the morning light dawning slowly, silently, about us.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         

Do not resist an evildoer….
Love your enemies
and pray for those who persecute you…
Be perfectly loving, therefore,
as your heavenly Mother-Father
is perfectly loving.
         —from Matthew 5

Why do I put my shoulder to the cart
of one one whom I meet who is in my way
and strain against them
until they are out of it

instead of standing by,
holding them gently,
and letting the infinite grace of love
work invisibly to change them
and me
and the way itself?

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         

I celebrate bruises, fevers and swelling of flesh.
Thank God for excess fluid, rashes and clots.
These are not failures of the body,
but acts of defiance and hope,
a gathering of neighbors.
Slice a body with scalpel or weapon
and immediately cells gather;
they reach out and take each other’s hands
across the abyss of pain,
and make a wholeness of it.
When tissues are torn,
threads of blood take hold of each other,
reweaving living fabric.
Break a bone and without pause
the little angels begin patiently stitching,
knitting calmly, purposefully in the dark.
Wound us and the forces of life
rush to the scene to assist and to heal.
And so it is with friendship:
the phone call goes out,
and the cells of love respond,
the bones of family connect,
stitching us together over miles
in a tissue of prayer.
It’s who we are, how we’re made,
the way we reach out and hang on for dear—
isn’t it precisely the whole miracle?—
life!

Beth underwent ten hours of surgery and six more days in the hospital, and we are home and recovering, thankful for the gift of love and healing, and the prayers of friends. Life is really, really good.
         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         

Be perfectly loving, therefore,
as your heavenly Lover is perfectly loving.
         —Matthew 5.48

Infinite Lover,
I want to be loving.
But sometimes my heart flows with some love
and some fear, some anger,
some wanting control.
I react. I’m defensive.
I come at people as if they are
my problem, my regret, my weakness.
My love gets trampled,
swamped by a dozen other things.
I am loving unless I have a point to make,
a lesson to teach, a score to win,
a character to defend, a wound to vent.

Help me to be more than partly loving,
but purely loving, loving to everyone,
not just the easy times, the easy people.
The hard ones are not ghosts from my darkness,
but wounded lovers, worthy of your love.
Sun of love, dawn in me;
forgive my self-centeredness
as morning forgives night.
Receive all that is not loving in me,
transfigure it in the light of your grace,
and flood me with your perfect love.
After all, though I am such a poor lover,
you love me perfectly.

Just so: each person you send me, remind me:
I am here only to love them,
only to love them,
purely to love.

         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         
When a loved one has surgery, you are with them as you can and you wait in the waiting room when you must. God gives us the spirit to reach into another person’s life when they’re going through a hard time, and companion one another. The word companion literally means one who shares bread. We share the bread of each other’s suffering, joy and struggle, the bread of one another’s lives.

Yet there’s a limit to that. Sometimes the closest we can get is the waiting room. We can be with one another, but not actually take their place. Every parent knows the ache of this limit.

And here’s a mystery: God knows the ache of being with us as we suffer, as if watching from beside us, and yet at the same time suffers with us, sharing the bread of our lives from within us. The deep scandal of the cross is that God suffers with us. God is our infinite companion. There is no limit to God’s with-ness.

The Holy Spirit is that Presence. When Jesus rose from the grave of our suffering he returned to give us his Spirit. He said, “You shall be my witnesses,” and gave us the spirit of companionship, the love by which we share the bread of one another’s lives. “You shall be my with-ness, to the ends of the earth.” This is the Spirit that guides us in love every day, every moment.

In that spirit, pray for those who struggle alone, who have no one to accompany them. Pray for those whose hands no one holds, whose bread no one shares.

Go in peace, and may the love of God and the companionship of Christ and the presence of the Holy Spirit accompany you, guide you and renew you each moment, into the mystery of infinite life.
         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         

You are the salt of the earth;
but if salt has lost its saltiness
how could it be resalted?
         —Matthew 5.13

Infinite Lover,
may I be seasoning for the earth today,
dissolving into your world,
drawing out its flavor,
bringing you delight.

Amen.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn.
         —Isaiah 58.6-8

Happy are those who fear the Lord. They have distributed freely, they have given to the poor. They rise in the darkness as a light for the upright.
         —Psalm 112. 9, 4

“You are the light of the world. Let your light shine before others, so that they may see by the light of your good works and give glory to your LIfe-Giver in heaven.
         —Matthew 5.14, 16

Every act of justice,
every act of compassion or mercy
is a light, a star in the night of this world.

You may think your efforts small and meaningless.
You may think they make no difference.
But go out and look up at the stars.

Which one should not have reached out in love?
Which one should never have bothered
to act in courage and compassion?

None of them rids the night of its darkness.
Yet God walks out and looks at them all
and smiles.

They all shine until they are swept up
in the great light
of the One who dawns among us.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         

Earth is playing with us.
City quieted by heaps of silence,
no one out but plows
moaning up and down the roads,
pickups lurching in and out of driveways,
back and forth
like peasant women grinding meal,
like the rabbi at prayer,
and shovelers lost
in little blizzards of their own making.

Snow up over your knees
is dang hard to walk in.
Half a day shot shoveling,
raking the roof, digging out the mailbox.
Fingers numb. Sore back. Snow down
my neck. Nose feels brittle. Why
do I love this so?

Perhaps that I am flesh,
weak, warm-blooded and in need
of a way being made,
a little white canyon through this heaven,
that I’m an earthling
and not the other way around,
that maybe paradise itself
is not without struggle,
that I wouldn’t be happy
without Another’s hand so, deft, upon me,
without being once in a while hemmed in,
defeated, even hurt a little
by this much beauty,
this much presence, this much
swirling, heaping, drifting mystery.

Up the street, two little kids
slide on their backs down the pyramid
at the end of their driveway.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         

You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see by the light of your good works and give glory to the Life-Giver, who radiates in all things.
         — Matthew 5. 14-16

Jesus does not say you should be light, or that somewhere in your shadows there is some light, but that you are light. It’s who you are, what you’re made of. One aspect of our meditation is to sit with this mystery: that your being is light, and that that light is God in you. The self that you bring into the world each day is radiant with the Beloved, and echoes with the original Word: “Let there be light.”

As you go through your daily life, to “let your light shine before others” you don’t have to do some saintly thing, any more than that candle has to do anything other than be itself. All you need to do is be true to that light of God that is you. Sometimes rather than asking which path is morally correct, we are better led by asking which path is more true to the Light within us. Do not be afraid to shine your light; since it is divine, it is always exactly what is needed. And do not despair that your light is inadequate, for the task of your life which God has given you is simply to light up the world where you are.

Next time you’re out at night look up at the tiniest star, give thanks that it shines as God has created it to, making the night more beautiful, and pray that you too might shine with the light of the Heavenly Lover, the light that is who you are.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         

May February bless you

with the patience of its trees,
the audacity of its birds,

with the welcome fire of its sun,
the exuberance of its storms.

God’s blessings be a warm blanket
and gentle words,

the mystery of shadows
and the promise of change

this February.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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