Dearly Beloved, Grace and Peace to you.                     I paddled a small boat through wind and waves in the open sea, the wind wanting to wipe me sideways, waves lurching me about, the constant pressing, the effort, the all aloneness of it, a little dot in an ocean wide of green, the struggle so welcome, so satisfying,

because I was there.

I have climbed mountains and hiked deserts, raised children and journeyed through a marriage simply to be there.

You have swung the hammer, sewed the seams, taken the bus, changed the diapers, recovered from the illness, done the time. You run races, you wash dishes, you row your body through its failings, you work the work of youth or of aging, you put your shoulder to it. Even in prayer’s stillness you go the distance.

This is the holy pilgrimage: to meet the given day. You give yourself to this moment as it is, hand to hand, all in, and beyond all accomplishment you are given the gift of this life. You come home with salt in your hair and a whole wide sea in your heart.       

                    Deep Blessings, Pastor Steve

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

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Dearly Beloved, Grace and Peace to you.                    When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet,          do not sit down at the place of honor,          in case someone more distinguished than you          has been invited by your host.                   —Luke 14.8

Don’t think poorly of yourself; that’s not it. Remember you are God’s Beloved, in whom God is delighted. And in humility remember the same of others. God has no hierarchy, no preferences, only love.

Be aware of the supremacy you internalize, assuming for yourself a higher place because you are white or male or not crazy, in all the ways we favor and judge. Resolve this day to meet everyone knowing they are as honored as you or anyone you honor. In your heart and mind give them the place of honor. For it is only in giving honor that we receive it.

Notice the thousand ways we sort and rank, the ways we assign goodness and privilege, the hierarchies we imagine into being. Defy them. At God’s table royalty and outcast sit side by side and are indistinguishable. Spend your life at that table and become indistinguishable from God.

          Deep Blessings, Pastor Steve

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

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Dearly Beloved, Grace and Peace to you.           Back from a week in a cabin on the coast of Maine, I’m all slowed down. The thing now is to not jump back up into fifth gear and start hurrying and fretting and multitasking and plowing all night long. Don’t come back from vacation and fill up with stuff. Stay a little vacant. Keep the empty place. Stay slow. Keep paying attention, keep being deeply present.

The thing as I rise from prayer is to stay in prayer. The purpose of prayer, or vacation, or sabbath, or sleep, is not just to come up for air so you can go back into the fray but also to slow yourself down so what you go back into isn’t a fray. Even when things around you are chaotic, you can be at peace. Even when others are panicking and hurrying and demanding, or when they aren’t doing anything at all and it’s all falling to you, even when the house is afire and you have to move quickly, you can stay rooted. You can do one thing at a time. Even when you’re not at your prayers you can still be in prayer.

Go on vacation, or into prayer, or on sabbath, early and often. Go there now. And don’t come back soon.          

                    Deep Blessings, Pastor Steve

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

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When we die maybe we all come rushing together with joy with pieces of each other that we’ve had all along, exchanging treasures, so happy to see each other, to find ourselves again.

So, why do we wait?

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

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          Floating here some three thousand miles off Portugal I hang in your green, breath held, limbs still, ears just under water, feet pointing down into mystery. The sea in my veins is so close to you, blood of the planet I throb in. In your silence I feel the crashing of waves in my heartbeat, the wind in and out when I come up to breathe. It may look just barely but I feel so alive. You have no ill will yet I know if I breathe wrong you will take me. This far north your hands are cold, your lips are cold. Still I float in your womb and you say “I will hold you.” Sitting in my umbilical prayers I hear you. Mountains and deserts say this, too. And beside a little white church on a North Dakota prairie a plot of ground, surrounded by family names, says as well, “I will hold you.” I hear you. I hang here in this green moment.

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

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Dearly Beloved, Grace and Peace to you.                    

The world class athlete does amazing things, and then goes home and is a person.

Admire the star who can do what you can’t, but here is a greater feat, this miracle you are!

There are no medals, no rankings, we only dreamed them.

You depend on no accomplishment; no victory or defeat defines you.

Allow what is purely given to blossom up from the root.

After all, eventually you stop asking the Beloved to perform for you

so you can just sit together.

                    Deep Blessings, Pastor Steve

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

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          My birds arrive from tropics and glaciers I can’t imagine.

My river sparkles into a distance I’ve never seen.

Some days the volcano trembles and all I can do is wonder.

When my Beloved finds wild animals in me should I be alarmed or merely startled?

I thought I understood, looked in the mirror enough to recognize me,

but now you have re-created me entirely and I must start over. Again.

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

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Dearly Beloved, Grace and Peace to you.                    

We hunch over in the wind and rain. No one pretends that it’s not real. When the tree comes down or the crops are ruined, when the river rises and won’t abate or the sea wall is breached, we cry out. The storm obeys something huge, not our little voices, our little shaken fists.

A storm makes it easy to believe. Yet you doubt the great wind heaving within you.

___________________ Weather Report

Deep breath moving through. Travelers’ advisory: depending on which way you face the wind you may arrive sooner than expected or not at all, or far to one side.

                    Deep Blessings, Pastor Steve

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

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Dearly Beloved, Grace and Peace to you.                    Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth?                   No, I tell you, but rather division!          From now on five in one household will be divided,                   three against two and two against three.                            —Luke 12.51-52

Whether you are among the two or the three the gospel will be controversial and someone will oppose you. What you believe, even who you are will trouble some. Stand. There is no pleasing others.

Beware of posing as someone acceptable. You may pretend— the costumes are easily available— but when you forget it’s a mask it will suffocate you.

The pine is not convinced to be an ash; the sparrow is not ashamed among finches. All of them sing of one glory, the many-voiced song of God. Let the crowd make their divisions, and divisions of divisions— you know better.          

                    Deep Blessings, Pastor Steve

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

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Dearly Beloved, Grace and peace to you.

The Beloved can think of nothing more beautiful           than her children running toward her so she stands a bit away           so we will come to her, but she is not waiting in faraway places:           no, it is in people whom we least suspect. When we look at the stranger ?           Ah! There she is.

Then she gives that gift           to us for our own delight. The Beloved has hidden us           in one another, waiting for us to see           and come together in astonishment.

Deep blessings, Pastor Steve

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

To receive Unfolding Light as a daily email write to me at unfoldinglight (at) gmail.com