Dearly Beloved, Grace and Peace to you.                    Having a hundred sheep and losing one,          you leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness          and go after the one that is lost until you find it.          When you’ve found it you lay it on your shoulders          and rejoice.                   —Luke 15.4-5

You must leave a lot behind for your life to become whole.

What the Beloved lets go of to have you!

If there were a hell God would always be there carrying people out.

There is a flock that is not well without you.

When you think you’ve run away, proud of your independence, you’re really just lost. You need each other.

All of life is God’s party at having found you. Or maybe, today, another.

Don’t be ashamed to be brought in on the shepherd’s shoulders: you got lost in the best possible way, looking for God.           Remember each of the other ninety-nine came the same way.                      

Deep Blessings, Pastor Steve

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

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Dearly Beloved, Grace and Peace to you.                    What woman having ten silver coins,          if she loses one of them,          does not light a lamp, sweep the house,          and search carefully until she finds it?                   —Luke 15.8

In the dark must, the dingy back alleys, under things, in dust, She is looking for you. She knows where to find you, even in the waste and scum of the city of all your plans gone bad, in the tumbled, shattered desert of your loneliness and exile, in the tangles and brambles of your shame, among the slot machines of your distractions, in the dense fog of your not even looking she knows where you are.           You are not some dull penny for spending. You are her dowry, her treasure. You are worth your worth, and she will not give up on you. Always she is looking, always she is finding. The light you walk by is her lamp.

When, unthinking, an unsayable joy enters your heart it is her, having found you.   

                  Deep Blessings, Pastor Steve

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

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                   Come to me, all you that are weary                   and are carrying heavy burdens,          and I will give you rest.          Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me;                   for I am gentle and humble in heart,          and you will find rest for your souls.                   For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.                            —Matthew 11.28-30

For those who labor, God, grant rest. For those without work, grace. For those too privileged to work, humility. For those who do forced labor, liberation.

God of mercy, give us the gift of gratitude for those who contribute for our sake, who by their hands have built our world. God of justice, keep us mindful of those who sew our clothes, pick our fruit, bear away our trash, clean our rooms for us. Keep our faith honest, that we may labor for justice for those who labor for us.

Give us what work we best may do with our hands or our hearts, for the sake of your Empire of Grace, and grant us the Spirit to do it.

We pray to you, Holy One who labors each moment to give us life.

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

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Dearly Beloved, Grace and Peace to you.

                            A mighty wind blows that penetrates everything, makes everything lean, topples some things, blows things away, sometimes stands upright what was prone but in a new place. A mighty wind blows. Yet this little candle in your hands never goes out.

____________________ Weather Report

High winds within and without as the pressure in the atmosphere meets the force in your heart

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

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         Unless you carry your cross and follow me          you can’t be my disciple.                   —Luke 14.27

What if I went through this day as if I were not wearing a cross but bearing one? What if I went through the day with my hands in the air?

What comfort do I cherish more than you, God? What security do I need to renounce? What privilege do I need to confront? What do you call me to surrender for the sake of love and justice? Not Jesus’ cross, but mine? what is it like?

I ready myself today to enter people’s suffering, to stand with the poor and outcast, to hurt with the hurting and risk with the vulnerable, to share in powerlessness and find power there. To trust you alone. You alone.

Set my hands on my cross, my shoulder under its weight. Let it lift me, the cross alone lift me.

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

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Dearly Beloved, Grace and Peace to you.                    Whoever comes to me          and does not hate father and mother,                   wife and children, brothers and sisters,                   yes, and even life itself,          cannot be my disciple                   —Luke 14.26

From the tug and tangle of family, the arms and laps, the hugs and slaps, the blessed hooks and havens, you must go. The comedies and tragedies of mistaken identity, the cages and pedestals you must quit. Your first love, your deepest loyalty, your honor’s fountain you must abandon. Leave them, your family since you were born, for another you’ve had even longer.

To serve God and horrify your mother, to obey your calling and not your father, to turn from your beloved to the Beloved, to claim the earth as your children, to cut that umbilical knot, this is how you are born. Until you can betray their will for God’s you have none of your own.

Beyond the temple, the cradle, the table, the monument on the battlefield that says who you are, you must go. Go to the top of the hill where the path splits, and choose a harsher grief, a deeper belonging, a wider freedom. Only turning on the hill, walking down the far side unseen can you come to yourself, come to God, come to those you love in love.

          Deep Blessings, Pastor Steve

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

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Dearly Beloved, Grace and Peace to you.          

For being hurtful or thoughtless, you should apologize. For having your opinions or feelings, you should not apologize.

When your fear or racism or selfishness fly unchecked, apologize. When you hurt someone— even unintentionally— apologize. When you do your best and you fail, when you are honest and others are uncomfortable, when you disagree and people are upset, do not apologize.

Apologize for being hurtful. Don’t apologize for being who you are.

Deep Blessings, Pastor Steve

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

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                                    Above the ground after a brief silence they resume their war before they are even out of the graveyard, climbing over each other trying to save their own lives, clawing at some unseen soil above them,

while beneath he rests in peace, where, after all, we each long to be, borne to our resting ground, cherished and at peace, soon and very soon.

Could I slip beneath the grass of my battlefields and travel there? Can I find a way to live without that combat, rest without that death, to grant to the wicked the eternal peace of the living?

God, bury me beneath the feet of my anxieties. Let them go on without me, arguing. Let me be a ghost of grace, untroubled, unbound, interred in love.

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

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          Holy One, Divine Lover, I am your image. Your glory, your love, your life, your grace is folded up in me a thousand times and this, my life, is your unfolding like a rose. Each day your beauty emerges, each moment your light unfolds in me. I honor this mystery. I trust it. I give thanks, that even in ugly places you unfold your beauty in me, each breath one of the infinite petals of God.

In the rose garden of God I marvel at the variety. I walk with gentle wonder. I give thanks that in each of us you give yourself to all of us.

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

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                   When you give a banquet, invite the poor,                   the disabled, the afflicted, and the blind.          You will be blessed,                   because they cannot repay you.                            —Luke 14.13-14

God, I give you myself, without expecting return. It is not about me. Let my gifts and generosity, my love and service disappear into the world. I let go of them without demand of how they are spent. I give my humility and forgiveness without expectation of how they are received. I give my faith, I give my love without regard to what it gets me. I love your Beloved, even the needy or troubling, for their sake, not mine. There is no exchange. I give my life and come home empty handed, home to you.

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

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