Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         
         After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others
         and sent them two by two ahead of him
         to every town and place where he was about to go.
                  —Luke 10.1

You do not just happen to be here,
         you have been sent.
You are intended to be here,
         to convey a presence.
The land of uncertainty and the unknown,
         these are your territory.
You are sent not away
         but ahead.
You are accompanied,
         paired with one who goes with you.
It is not your success, but your love and courage
         that fulfill your purpose.
The path will need you;
         the journey will create you.
What we receive compels us,
         and, not alone, we go.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

To subscribe to Unfolding Light by daily e-mail write to unfoldinglight8(at)hotmail.com

         
                  
God of mercy,
bless this nation of ours.
We pray for liberty,
         that none may be oppressed or exploited.
We pray for democracy;
         that all voices be heard, and none silenced.
We pray for peace,
         that there be harmony, in which everyone’s gifts may flourish.
We pray for justice,
         that no one benefit at the expense of another,
         that there be a just and equal sharing of power.
We pray for a spirit of patriotism,
         that we be faithful to one another as a whole.
We thank you for our freedom, and those who have protected it:
         teachers who taught us to question,
         neighbors who acted in covenant with one another,
         those who spoke out against injustice.
We thank you for the gift of our diversity;
         may we honor all people
         and celebrate our rich differences.
We thank you for this land, for it is yours.
         May we live in reverence for your Creation.
God of mercy, in love of our country we confess
         our mistreatment of the poor, and of the land,
         our abuse of power, and idolatry of our place in the world.
Temper our might with humility
         and our power with compassion.
Mend our divisions, heal our fear,
         and restore our love of one another.
Bless this nation,
         and bless every nation the same,
         for all of us are sisters and brothers.
On this Day of Inter-independence,
bless us O God, and make us a nation of justice and peace,
         a nation of benevolence and generosity,
         a nation of mutual sharing and cooperation,
         a nation devoted to the healing of the world.
God of mercy, bless this nation,
that we may be a nation of mercy.
Amen.

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

To subscribe to Unfolding Light by daily e-mail write to me at unfoldinglight8(at)hotmail.com

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
               
         Bear one another’s burdens;
         in this way you fulfill the will of Christ.
                  —Galatians 6.2

Let this be your mind today,
your purpose for being here:
not to accomplish tasks,
not to get your way,
not to complete your agenda,
but to share the burdens of those around you,
to lighten the load of those
who walk this life beside you.
You are not asked to solve every problem
or to heal every wound,
but simply to be present
to bear one another’s burdens
so that they do not struggle alone.
In this way Christ is alive in you.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

To subscribe to Unfolding Light by daily e-mail write to unfoldinglight8 (at) hotmail.com

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.

Sometimes as I wake up and face the morning, I don’t feel hope or anticipation. I feel a weight on me—not a great, crushing burden, just a little load, enough to weigh my spirit down. It’s usually the weight of something unpleasant coming, some duty or obligation, some sense of something I ought to do, something between me and joy. Maybe it’s a big responsibility at work, or maybe it’s just a household chore. Or guilt over something that I messed up. Maybe it’s loneliness. Maybe it’s fear that this is not going to be a brilliant day. Maybe it’s a vague sense that I need to prove myself, or that my life ought to be somehow different, and that that difference is a long way off. It’s a heavy feeling, a binding-up, discouraging feeling.

That’s when I sit down and come back to the present moment. I disregard all those thoughts about the future or some other existence, and simply be aware of myself sitting in this room, breathing, alive, created by God, and a delight to God. I direct my attention to God’s presence. I don’t expect to feel it, but I let my deep awareness go beyond my feelings. I become aware that God is lovingly present, embracing me and dwelling within me. And in that presence I lay my burdens down. I lay down my fears and expectations, my thoughts and feelings, all of it. I lay down the burden of my despair, the burden of the rest of the day, the burden of upholding who I am. I simply be, here and now, and let God be with me. In this moment, in this breath, there is only God.

And when after a time I go, I leave my burdens down by that riverside. I leave them. And God goes with me, from this present moment into the next—free, beloved, and light. Although sometimes I have to stop again and lay my burdens down once more and enter the joy and freedom of the present moment, the blessing of God’s presence. That’s the pilgrimage: not to carry your treasure to some far off destination; but to lay your burdens down and leave them and walk in the grace of God. That’s the most beautiful journey of all.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

To subscribe to Unfolding Light write to me at unfoldinglight8 (at) hotmail.com

         
         
                  
God of life,
for a brother of our peace,
         walking on the edge of life,
we hold open our hearts.

For a father of our hope,
         standing at the heart of life,
we raise our heads.

To all those whose longing
         looks so much like him,
we extend our hands.

For the world we have seen in him
         rising in us no less mightily
we stand.

All whose gifts are yet imprisoned,
         whose lives are not yet freed,
we remember, and we embrace.

The courage you gave him lives in us;
         our gratitude for him unites us,
one love, one Spirit.

What he has accomplished is in our hands;
         what he has not yet accomplished
is in our hands.

God of mercy, God of justice, Gentle One,
         Our Mighty Hope,
you who forgive and transform and smile,

in his honor give us vision,
         in his will give us a future,
in his spirit give us ourselves.

Amen.

         
         

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

To subscribe to Unfolding Light by daily e-mail write to unfoldinglight8(at)hotmail.com

         
         
Praise be to you, O homeless God,
         for every path is your dwelling;
in this universe you have fashioned
         there is no place where you do not rest.

Praise be to you, whose place has been taken,
         for you give your place to the poor.
To those who have no home
         you grant a place in your heart.

Blessed are you, for you hold tenderly
         those whom others scorn;
and those who are passed by without notice
         you know by name.

Those who are without shelter
         you hold in your heart,
you honor them whom we judge,
         and you cherish their children.

For refugees and runaways
         you are their only safety.
You accompany them faithfully;
         and with them you search for belonging.

In your grace may all who are destitute
         find mercy and courage;
may they know their belovedness,
         and their belonging in this world.

We confess our kinship with them,
         for we all rely on your mercy.
Our only home is in you,
         and our only belonging is with each other.

O homeless God, you cry for justice,
         that we may make this world a welcome home,
that we who find shelter in your grace
         may make room for your beloved ones.

For it is you who seek a home among us
         in our sisters and brothers, it is you.
It is our own wholeness that they seek,
         that your human family may be one.

O unsheltered God, may the home that you find
          be ours.
We open our hearts to you,
         we open our laws and our powers to you.

Have mercy on us,
         for our family is asunder;
we have cast out our sisters and brothers
         and they want to come back home.

May we know your mercy
         as those who rely on the mercy of others.
May we open ourselves to others
         as you have to us.

Praise be to you, for your hospitality is deep,
         for in you we are, all of us, home.
Praise! For by your grace we shall dwell
         in the house of the Lord forever.

        

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

To subscribe to Unfolding Light by daily e-mail write to unfoldinglight8(at)hotmail.com

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.

         
         The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,
         patience, kindness, generosity,
         faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
                  —Galatians 5.22-23

However the Spirit works in you,
work with that Spirit.
However the Spirit bears love in you,
let that love grow.
If beauty or friendship feed your joy,
bathe your heart in those things.
If words or silence nourish your peace,
give time to them to bless you.
If baseball makes you more patient
then play baseball.
Whatever nourishes the Spirit in you
practice, that it may bear fruit.

And whatever diminishes
your kindness or generosity,
whatever chokes your faithfulness,
or diverts your gentleness and self-control,
whatever assaults the Spirit and its life in you,
let go of those things.
If watching the news or working too long
drains your compassion,
then repent of those things
and pray that you find a way
to tend the Spirit in you,
whose fruit already is there within you,
whole and life-giving, quietly ripening.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

To subscribe to Unfolding Light by daily e-mail write to unfoldinglight8(at)hotmail.com

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests
         but the Human One has no place to lay his head.
                  —Luke 9.58

Among God’s creatures every one belongs.
But in our city we make sure to leave some out,
and God, well God’s the One We Have No Place To Put.
We dress Christ as a prince disguised as a pauper,
but there is no such secret, no difference.
We’re sure he’s on a mission trip to the slums,
not that he is born and dies there.
But the poor are not symbols of Christ, but Christ.
We can’t separate them from our forgiveness.
The cross is not so strange, just a cardboard box,
a mat under a bridge, a dark back room.
Christ survives amidst our offal, sick and dying,
picking through our wreckage unnoticed,
the Wandering One, a castoff among castoffs,
refusing our comfy middle class crown, our power,
our being right, being normal, being like us.
Only the lost and unworthy understand him,
his grace, his tattered holiness, his absolute embrace.
Our insiders’ religion of Fitting In,
the idolatry of privilege blinds us.
He is on the other side of the Wall.
We give him handouts and send him on his way.

To follow him you will agree to lose more than you gain:
your place, your entitlement, your assurance,
your protection from being an outsider,
the familiar ease of walking into a room,
the certainty you won’t lose more.

But you will,
because his gentle voice comes to you
from those dark rooms in you,
her voice from beyond your own Wall,
the one in you who has no place to lay her head.
The unacceptable in you, the unknown solitary,
the offender, the homeless orphan, the derelict,
the misfit looks out at the world in trembling uncertainty,
and in her voice you hear the holy,
in whom you long to touch all the others so.
You are known, and in your very unbelonging
loved for no good reason at all,
and that is enough, that is everything, that is all.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

To subscribe to Unfolding Light by daily e-mail write to unfoldinglight8(at)hotmail.com

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         

How silly: we stand
on the porch of heaven
a little uneasy, though eager, too,
the heartfelt invitation in our hands,
briefly admiring the pearly gates—
amazing, really, the pearl, the craft,
the lucent colors purling up the columns,
the welcome warmth wafting from within—
but then we turn to the hope at hand…
and so— how silly, and how sad:
we stand and fumble for the keys,
and rummage anxiously, and dig around
forever, searching, failing, grasping more,
our friends and dear beloved looking on,
while we’re forever stuck outside—
when, look:
the door’s not locked,
not even closed,
there is no door,
and all we seek is on this side of it.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

To subscribe to Unfolding Light by daily e-mail write to unfoldinglight8(at)hotmail.com

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         
                  
All day long you will grasp doorknobs:
shiny ones and worn ones, plain ones,
broken ones that only spin, or don’t latch,
locking ones, loose ones, or levered handles,
and if you’re lucky maybe an old glass one.

Each doorknob you touch will remind you:
that there is always more…
that the Teacher says, “I stand at the door…”
that God invites you into a new room in your life…
that what you haven’t seen becomes evident
only when you turn something around…
that a lock that keeps someone out
keeps everyone out… and keeps you in…
that sometimes you need to close the door
of your soul and have some solitude.

You will be aware of invitations to “Enter.”
You will notice promises of “Exodus.”

You know how people have something to say,
and it’s not until your hand is on the doorknob
to leave that they bring it up? And that sometimes
that someone is you? Live every moment
with your hand on the doorknob. Say it now.
And be ready to listen long past quitting time.

As yourself: are you one who makes it easy,
or hard, for someone to get in?

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

To subscribe to Unfolding Light by daily e-mail write to unfoldinglight8(at)hotmail.com