Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
      
         

You used to be dead.
You were trapped in life-stealing ways:
under the sway of this world
you thought you could force your way,
write your own cosmic laws.
We all do it.
We act like little self-contained body-pods,
slaves to our ego’s fearful desires,
children of fear and despair. All of us.

But God, rich with mercy,
loves us with this huge, heartbreaking love,
even when we drive our life into a fatal crash,
and makes us alive,
raising us up out of the grave
arm in arm with Christ.

You’ve been saved, kid: pulled right out
of the wreckage of your life.
God raises us up and sets us gently
right next to Christ,
at the center of Life, in Christ’s heart.
Only afterwards will we begin to see
just how immensely deep God’s grace is,
in showing us such kindness in Christ Jesus.

You have been saved by God’s grace.
Just trust this.
This is not your own doing;
it’s totally a gift from God.
It’s not anything you can even influence.
Nobody can claim that.
There’s no such thing as a self-made person:
we are what God made us,
which is God’s Beloved,
created for the purpose of goodness.
This is your destiny, your identity,
your whole life.
Get used to it.

         

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

To receive Unfolding Light as a daily e-mail,
write to me at unfoldinglight(at)gmail.com

             
In the desert Moses lifted up an image of healing;
so the Human One is lifted up
so that we can trust,
and receive the life that flows forever from God.  
For God so loved the world
that God came as the Beloved Child among us,
so that in trusting in God’s love,
we would not be limited by death,
but live that life that is infinite.
God came as the Beloved into the world
not to condemn anybody,
but to save the whole world with Love.
Trusting in love, we lay hold of life;
without that trust, we waste away—
trust that God has actually come among us in love.

This is the Truth,
and it shines among us like light.
Of course we try to hide our brokenness in the dark;
we want to stay out of the light,
and avoid seeing our evil exposed.
But the truth draws us into the light,
so that we can see clearly,
see that who we are and all we do
comes from God.

         
         

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

To receive Unfolding Light as a daily e-mail,
write to me at unfoldinglight(at)gmail.com

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
      
         
                  
God has no plan for the trappings of your life,
bears no preference for your surroundings,
or the place where you are set.

God has no intention for what happens to you,
whether it be lovely or painful, easy or hard.

God’s plan is for your soul,
not for what is beyond it.

God’s delight is that you be this particular divine self
no matter what befalls you;
that in pleasure or suffering,
light or shadow, wherever you are
you be this unmatched, gleaming beauty,
this unrepeatable, precious beam
of God’s own light.
To that end God devotes God’s very being.

God has made you the little boat
God will ride down the great, turbulent river,
made you by hand,
lovingly, with infinite art and skill,
trusting you are lovely and sturdy enough,
whatever may come,

knowing that in another life
God is also the stream.

        
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

To receive Unfolding Light as a daily e-mail,
write to me at unfoldinglight(at)gmail.com

      
         This is judgment:
         that light has come into the world.
                  —John 3.19

Light of Love,
shine your light into me.

May I see myself by your light,
see by love, not fear.

May I see what is, not what I wish,
or what others want to see.

May I see what is in shadows,
brought to light in your love.

May your light shine in me,
not to judge but to shine.

Light of Love,
may your light shine out from me.

         

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

To receive Unfolding Light as a daily e-mail,
write to me at unfoldinglight(at)gmail.com

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
      

         
And God spoke all these words:

I am Love, your God, who set you free. I never give you less than freedom.

I exceed your imagining.

I am too great to manipulate or control.

I give you time and space to simply be yourself.

I surround you with unconditional love and faithfulness.

I only give life, not take it.

I am faithful.

I give and do not hold back.

I reveal What Is to you.

I desire only your blessing, not for my sake, but for yours.

And you: what will you do?

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

To receive Unfolding Light as a daily e-mail,
write to me at unfoldinglight(at)gmail.com

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
      
          God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom,
          and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.
                  —1 Corinthians 1.25

God, forgive me
for trusting my certainty
against yours,
for thinking it weak or foolish
to show your grace,
to love and love alone
as radically as on the cross.
When I get mad or insist on my way
I cling to my foolishness.
When I am anxious about being powerless
I covet a strength that doesn’t exist.

Spirit, wean me of this foolishness.
Let me be unknowing
and loving
rather than wise and cruel.

O Christ, when others think
I’m weak and foolish
help me find my strength in you
who were even weaker
and more foolish than I.

     
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

To receive Unfolding Light as a daily e-mail,
write to me at unfoldinglight(at)gmail.com

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
      
         “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!”
                  —John 2.16

I don’t want to have had to beg.
I’ve brought my offering, fair price.
The unknowing face, the curing knife,
the little cry, the pang, parceled out,

not great, but enough to satisfy,
the dark lump in my rough basket.
(Its weight can’t be dismissed,
how it knocked against the crowd.)

But it’s taken at the door,
I have nothing to offer now.
The market’s empty.
There’s no exchange,

only a stillness
in which all is well, already well,
the wound received, unpaid.
a longing met, two hearts rejoined.

There is no market. Just presence.
Only now do I kneel,
with hands less empty than at first,
my priceless heart, my eyes of light.

        
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

To receive Unfolding Light as a daily e-mail,
write to me at unfoldinglight(at)gmail.com

      
         Who can discern their errors?
                  Free me from my hidden faults.
                           —Psalm 19.2

God, I do not even know
the ways I distance myself from you,
the wonder I pass by without notice,
the glory I sleep through.
I can’t suspect the ways I hurt you,
fall short of your desire for me,
fail to be who you lead me to be.
I believe the little lies I tell myself;
I bow to my secret fears.
I don’t even know what it would be
to love as I have been loved.
I miss the hurt I cause
more often than I notice.
I share in people’s wounding and unfreedom
in ways I can’t see.
How often think I’m doing the right thing!
Forgive me, for I do not know what I am doing.
Forgive me for not knowing.
Forgive my hidden sins,
and if they can’t be removed at least
bring them out of hiding.
Wake me up.
Don’t let me think I have such a small inheritance:
let me see—let it overwhelm me—
just how immense
is the forgiveness I need,
and you offer.
O God, your love I receive
without even knowing why.

         
         

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

To receive Unfolding Light as a daily e-mail,
write to me at unfoldinglight(at)gmail.com

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
      
         
This is about prayer.
When you’ve tramped down a path
over and over through deep snow
you create a little trough of packed snow
that you can walk easily on
though the powder on either side
is deep. It appears to be a trench
but really you’re walking on the top
of a narrow wall. Step off either side
and you plunge in up to your hips.

So what is the prayer part:
walking on the unseen?
Paying close attention, not stepping off,
not being fooled by drifted snow,
following the narrow way?
Yes, perhaps. But prayer is not so hard, is it?
I’m thinking of when you miss and
step off into the deep, stuck even a little—
that’s prayer. When you feel
the snow pressing against your legs.
When you really are where you are.
When you touch a boundary.
When you’re wondering what’s next.
When you stop.
When you laugh at yourself.
When you know you are an animal,
but not a fox.

Then you step back up onto the path
and get on with going places.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

To receive Unfolding Light as a daily e-mail,
write to me at unfoldinglight(at)gmail.com

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
      
         What will it profit you to gain the whole world
                  and forfeit your life?
         Indeed, what can you give
                  in return for your life?
                           —Mark 8.6-37

To be truly alive
is to be fully, freely, lovingly present
in this moment,
drinking in the grace of God
and pouring myself out in love
for God and for all beings.

What do I gain
by abandoning this
to be right,
to get my way,
to be comfortable,
to manage how people think of me?

When I win the argument,
protect my beliefs, defend myself,
when I judge another
and put them in their place,
when I separate myself from those
who suffer pain or injustice,
when I buy another trinket
for my heart’s little room
and close the door,
what have I lost?

I am not a body or a reputation
but a soul.
God of love,
open my door.
Let life spill in
and spill out.
Let me suffer and love,
truly alive.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

To receive Unfolding Light as a daily e-mail,
write to me at unfoldinglight(at)gmail.com