Suffering produces endurance,
         and endurance produces character,
         and character produces hope,
         and hope does not disappoint us,
         because God’s love has been poured into our hearts
         through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
                  —Romans 5.3-5

Poured in,
not a trickle or a little cupful, but a deep river,
a Niagara Falls of love, an Amazon of grace,
swirling with unseen currents, eddies whirling,
curling about the stones and banks of our hearts,
Jordan of promise, Red Sea of freedom,
deep enough for Jonah’s whale,
pouring into our hearts, meeting every space,
taking the shape of our hearts, welling up
with the living water of the well at Sychar,
Jesus and the woman dipping deeply,
this love that bears us through all suffering,
for “when you pass through the waters
I will be with you,” still pouring,
even the suffering with the love in it;
and our only life purpose is to drink,
to let the love pour in and soak us, overflow
and spill out in every possible way,
because this is what the Spirit is doing in us,
thirsty for God, the holy emptiness that keeps filling
like a river emptying and becoming itself
in love, the pouring of it unending.

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

   —May 22, 2019

         “Those who love me will keep my word,
         and my Mother-and-Father will love them, and we will come to them
         and make our home with them.
         The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Mother-and-Father will send in my name,
         will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.
         Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.”
                  —John 14.23, 26-27

Holy Trinity, Mystery of Love,
Holy Community, Heavenly Family,
I open my heart to your presence,
making your home with me.
I sit among you, sibling,
gathered at our table,
fourth member of the Trinity.
I open my heart to your peace,
settled about me like a home.
I open my heart to your whole family,
all of us beloved,
all of us siblings,
all of us enfolded
in your loving, peaceful presence.
All of us holy.

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

   —May 21, 2019

         In the beginning
         when God created the heavens and the earth,
         the earth was a formless void
         and darkness covered the face of the deep,
         while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.
                        —Genesis 1.1-2

In darkness and chaos
         God breathes over the water,
                  Creation awaits.

In the void, the emptiness,
         there is space
                  for the new.

Over the face of the deep
         is the holy silence
                  in which the One will speak.

Behold.
         Wait.
                  Listen.

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

   —May 20, 2019

As you read the words
their ardent passion makes you blush.
Something in you rises and dances.

Across the room
your lover looks at you
with those liquid eyes.

Read just enough to feel hot,
then put the Bible down
and go over there.

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

   —May 17, 2019

         This is how they will know you are my disciples,
         if you love each other.
                  — John 13.35

The path of faith
is not just to believe in God
but to live as if you do:
to love the loveless; to pour yourself out as light;
to forgive fearlessly; to listen deeply;
to be humble, knowing you are held
in the highest regard in the halls of heaven,
to give exceedingly, knowing you receive more;
to feed the hungry, remembering your hunger;
to act for justice boldly, having been been set free.
It is to trust God in the awfullest times,
and to see God even in the worst of yourself.
It is to see God and to seek God in the plainest things,
the beautiful and the hard, the welcome and the strange.
It is to move out of your little circle of light
knowing when you step into the darkness
the light will come with you.
It is to love without judgment or exception,
knowing that is how you are loved.
The path of faith is not just to believe in God
but to reach out to what you believe to be God.
It is to entrust yourself to the One who believes in you,
and who loves the whole world,
and to become that One, who is already one with you.
The path of faith is to become the love God has for you
which is for all the world.
May it be so.

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

   —May 16, 2019

         I give you a new commandment,
         that you love one another.
         Just as I have loved you,
         you also should love one another.
                           —John 13.34

Jesus, you set the bar high:
not merely “as yourself,”
for you have loved me better than I love myself:
as you have cherished and honored me,
accompanied me, borne my burdens,
delighted in me, forgiven me,
walked the path before me,
poured your whole self into me,
seen the divine possibility
and the divine actual in me.
“Come to me,” you have said,
“take my yoke upon you,”
and the light of your burden
is love.
For that infinite, intimate love,
unknowable, unstoppable,
I thank you.

Christ, love
in me
that I may love others
as you have loved me.

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

―May 15, 2019

What we call “Heaven” is not the afterlife, not a gated community in the clouds for good people. Heaven is not later but now, not “up,” but in. Heaven is not elsewhere but really, radically here, here and now. “Heaven” is our sort of elegant word for the heart of God, the Divine Presence that gives rise to all existence, the essence of being that is love that throbs within every created thing. Heaven is the mystery of God dwelling within us. Heaven is the love that is the Truth of It of everything. It is the Divine Unity, the Holy One that is all. Yeah, it’s a mouthful, and a mind-bender. That’s why we shorten it to “heaven.”

Jesus calls it the Empire of God. He says this Divine Reality is all around us and within us, “at hand” and “among you.” It’s the energy of God in every thing, every moment, every process. And it’s pure love. Jesus invites us to be in harmony with that energy, to “enter into the kingdom.”

That love, that healing oneness, that life-giving grace, is present for us, available to us all the time. Even in our worst moments and our narrowest passages it is here: Love within us and we within it. God offers it to us without cost or requirement. All we have to to is be there.

Of course when we get caught up in the anxieties and sufferings of this world such a splendid heaven seems far away. But that’s exactly when Jesus says the garden is most present, the gate open widest. It’s on the cross, after all, when he says, “Today you shall be with me in paradise.”

Bring to mind your anxieties and sufferings, or those of ones you care about. Imagine God is offering God’s healing, life-giving Presence, God’s unifying grace, right in the middle of that awfulness. Not promising that after you die it’ll get better, but that there’s another reality right here. With that in mind, meditate on these words from John’s Revelation (Rev. 21.1-6). Read them over and over. Haul your pain into this blessing. Stay there and see what happens.

         See, the home of God is among mortals.
         God will dwell with them as their God; they will be God’s peoples,
         and God will be intimately with them.
         God will wipe every tear from their eyes.
         Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
         for the first things have passed away.
        And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.
         I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.
         To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.”

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

   —May 14, 2019

Beloved,

I love being here. The light is so different.
I think it’s that everyone is in it.
You know? When you come out into the light
it changes the light. Makes it so beautiful.
The water’s nice, too.
Thinking of you.
So brilliant of me to have snuck you in my luggage!

Love, God

________________
Weather Report

Light,
often heavy,
with flooding in many areas
as the lightfall overtops
the levees of our flesh.
Expect periods of darkness,
also luminous.

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

   —May 13, 2019

         These are they who have come out of the great ordeal;
         they have washed their robes and made them white
         in the blood of the Lamb.
                  —Revelation 7.14

Birthed through the great ordeal, all of us
are bathed in the life flowing through the Beloved’s veins,
washed clean in the love of pure self-giving,

all of us alike rinsed of our private pains,
our dignifying stains, bleached of excuse
that would set one apart from another.

Our forgiveness has cost so much pain,
and we have received and imposed so much,
no one wants any more hurt. We choose mercy.

We’ve too much grief to keen for any more blood
on these spotless robes. Dead to ordeal, raised to rest,
all of us washed as newborns, swaddled in white,

are at peace together
in the arms
of the Peace of Christ.

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

   —May 10, 2019

Love is the fundamental force of the universe.
The big bang that everything comes from,
the gravity that holds it all together,
the basic process at work
within every thing and every moment
is the grace of God,
love making all things one and whole and holy.
It is vast, containing every galaxy,
yet intimately present in our minds and our bodies.
Like particle physics, like microbiology,
this process of wholeness becoming whole,
of love unfolding throughout Creation,
is going on all the time
whether we recognize it or not.
The invitation is to recognize it,
to trust it, to live in harmony with it all the time.
The voice of the shepherd is the voice of that grace.
It is miraculous power we tap into
when we heal, when we bless, when we love.
Surely we fail often,
but within and beyond our little wars and atrocities
the infinite grace of the Loving One
unfolds continually, dwarfing all our evil.
Root yourself in this Peace, breathe its grace,
and live with its energy.
         The Realm of God is near at hand.

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

   —May 9, 2019