Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         
                  
It shall be that in the labyrinth
of days and seasons, even the sun
whose rising makes its way
along its close and tended garden path
day by day, bringing summer
here, and winter there,
shall turn back and go no farther,
but seek its other home as well,
and days that have grown long retreat,
or shadows shrink that have increased,
so that there shall be no dominance
of either light or darkness, day or night,
but only dappled beauty, life and death,
all things gathered up in grace,
as there shall be neither happiness alone
nor sorrow, but joy in all things.
On that day when the sun turns,
remember and be mindful,
grateful for both summer and winter,
for no time or season remains forever,
but comes only to marks its passing;
so that you may neither cling nor forget,
but with the sun rise in a new place
every day, and be present in this life,
this day, each moment we are given,
in gratitude and wonder, praising
the One who is always present,
always attentive, always in love.

         
         
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.

         
         There was a great wind…
                  but the Lord was not in the wind;
         and after the wind an earthquake,
                  but the Lord was not in the earthquake;
         and after the earthquake a fire,
                  but the Lord was not in the fire;
         and after the fire
                  a sound of sheer silence.
                  —1kings 19.11-12

Not lack of words
but God’s native tongue.
Even “Light” and “Firmament”
are silent.

The root the world comes from:
silence is to the universe
what music is to the song.

The sound of listening,
the impossibility of containment,
the presence beyond understanding.

Silence is the lover;
words are the clothes.

“In the meadow beyond words and ideas…”
Prayer is allowing yourself
to be taken up by the Silence.

Silence is the body of God.

The world is held in silence
like a pebble in your hand.

What God says.
Even you are a metaphor.

         
         
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.
         

         A man of the city who had demons met him.
         For a long time he had worn no clothes,
         and he did not live in a house but in the tombs.
                  —Luke 8.27

Listen to the way we use the words “crazy” or “insane,” as in “That’s just crazy” or “If you think that, you’re insane.” The way we usually use those words we don’t mean “mentally ill.” We mean “wrong,” “stupid,” “obstinate,” “unwise” or “having a bad attitude.” Sometimes we mean “imaginative” or “exceptional,” but usually there’s a negative connotation to it. There’s a difference between being mentally ill and being stupid, but I’m not sure our use of words help us see that. When we accuse people of being “crazy” because they disagree with us or make choices we don’t like, we make it hard not to think that there’s something ”wrong” with people who are mentally ill. Many people who are in prison or homeless are not at fault: they’re limited by aspects of their brain functions that they can’t control. But it’s hard for us not to blame them.

Just as with our joints and our digestive system and all our other parts, sometimes with our brains things don’t work smoothly. When people have cancer we don’t think there’s anything wrong with them; we feel sorry for them. But when they’re bipolar or OCD or depressed or have schizophrenia we feel like there’s something wrong with them or their attitude, as if they’re making a bad choice. Because it affects their personality we feel as if there’s something wrong with who they are as a person. Hence the stigma around mental illness—and the way we say “crazy” when we mean “wrong.”

Maybe it was better to think that people were possessed by demons. It took seriously that a person is sometimes under the influence of forces they can’t control. It allowed people to think of one as a good person possessed by bad spirits—like germs— instead of just a bad person. Jesus recognized each person as a soul, independent of their mental state. He could see the worthy, beautiful sane person beneath the demons, and he set people free from those demons.

We are not likely to “cure” mental illnesses with prayer as Jesus did. But we can at least see people who have mental challenges with compassion and faith. We can avoid implying that mental illness is a matter of choice or attitude. We can honor the soul that is whole and healthy within each of us, regardless of the functioning of our brain. In fact, we’re all a little insane: a little deluded and insensitive; often controlled by unhealthy thoughts, feelings, images, fears, memories and fantasies; a little out of touch with reality. We’re all a little crazy, and also infinitely blessed, loved and honored. So be careful how you use that word.
         
         
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.
         
         
There are a lot of Korean pastors in the New England Conference of the United Methodist Church. At our Annual Conference session this past week one of our Korean colleagues was preaching. He ended his sermon by singing a Korean song, which he said was about love shining a light in the darkness. Of course we couldn’t understand the words, but it was a beautiful song, and he’s a very good singer. Toward the end of his song I gradually became aware that he was not the only one singing. There were others in the congregation, Koreans who knew that song, who had spontaneously begun to sing along. They grew in number and richness until by the end there was a whole chorus, full and vibrant and beautiful, dozens of them scattered among the several hundred of the rest of us, singing in Korean, blessing us, encouraging us, surrounding us.

I imagine it was a powerful moment for them, for their culture and language and heritage to have such a voice among us. It was the other side of Pentecost. But it was a moving moment for us anglos, to find ourselves amidst a community we didn’t even realize was there, a hope and a promise and a love that people were carrying around among us unsaid, and it had been there, unnoticed, all the time, but suddenly here it was in full voice—and we were in the middle of it!

God One, yet God is community, evident among us. We are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, saints and angels who keep the faith, bear the hope and pray the prayers that sustain us though we do not see them. Most often they are among the outsiders, not paragons of the dominant culture. But they are among us. Only occasionally do their voices rise above the clatter and chatter of the world. But they are there. They sing in a language we can’t know, and we are not given to grasp the Mystery of which they sing. But their song is of love. We are serenaded by the chorus of the Beloved every moment. They do not insist, but they invite us to be still and listen for them, to be washed in their song, and to wonder in gratitude and joy.

I will not hear even bird song again in the same way.
         
         
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.
         
         
                  
Nameless, hidden,
unbeckoned, you are present.
Too quiet for me to overhear.

I enter the clearing,
the frog slips into the pond,
the turtle ducks inside,
the bird falls silent.

After my thoughts and askings
I return to stillness and silence
for a long time,
a long, quiet, waiting time,
before you might murmur.

         
         
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.
         
         
I am grateful to have lived sixty years
through so many avoided disasters
and unaccomplished endings,
to have lived, and lived to tell about it,
to have loved, and to have been loved deeply,
which is is no small thing.

I am drawn through the labyrinth of years
toward the Beloved, possessed.
It is not so much a journey or a lesson,
as the receiving of a gift,
the richness of a rose still opening,
a long unfolding of love.

I am grateful to have learned
that wisdom costs, and comes slowly,
that I have been given more than I can know.
Sixty years is long enough to see
that the universe is expanding in me,
species evolving, tectonic plates moving,
creation in its eighth day.
Long enough to to have died a couple of times,
and finally begun living, long enough
to have begun to arrive in the present moment,
long enough to get over being old
for simply being here.

After these years I know less of the mystery
and trust it more, the Presence
whose revealing is my life.

My death and I grow closer every day,
and every day there is more life in me.

After sixty years so much has accrued
and been lost, there is nothing left but joy.

What is next I cannot know, but trust.

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.
         
         
         
You lay disdain as a cloth
over your cracked table.
The flowers in the vase are no testament.

Your outcry at the intruder’s little infractions
is swallowed by the great heartbroken silence.
It is a ruse, a distraction from what is
actually happening to you— but only for yourself.

God has taken no notice,
kneeling at your feet in forgiveness,
washing them clean with her tears,
wiping them with her hair,
anointing them with pierced hands,
kissing them and kissing them.

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.
         
A woman in the city, who was a sinner, having learned that he was eating in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment. She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him—that she is a sinner.”
                  —Luke 7.37-39

There are those who have it all together,
but you are not among them.
Maybe you’ve been told, or maybe
you simply know. Something in you
keeps failing. Something in you
can’t stop crying. In a language
you don’t understand. Maybe, worst of all,
you think you’re fine, but you’re not.
But there is definitely something wrong with you.
And you come to Jesus like this crazy woman
who clearly does not know how to come to Jesus,
raw and naked and a little off,
and you give him your raw, naked, way-off feelings,
your flimsy prayer, your strung-together faith,
your totally inappropriate self—
and he stops, and in the long silence
he leaves the others to their nice dinners,
their keys to cities and all that glory and praise.
He’s more in love with broken hearts.
Eyes closed, faint smile, he gives you this gift:
that you don’t need anything at all,
that you have, and are, something delightful to offer,
which he receives and loves and holds to his heart
the rest of his suffering days.

         
         
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.
         
         
                  
Release yourself from the burden of resentment.
See how much energy it takes?
Lay it down.

Break free from the limits of being compensated.
No one could pay what it was worth anyway.
Let yourself be a gift.

Come out of the tomb of the past.
Why keep repeating Act I?
Let that scene be over now.

You can live in this imperfect life
or sleep through it with nightmares
of how it was supposed to have been.

You are dancing, not fighting.
People crash into you.
Keep dancing.

Don’t chain yourself to what you deserve,
which is so small and heavy.
Receive what is given, which is infinite.

What’s wrong with you? Nothing.
You haven’t been damaged after all. Still there.
Well then don’t mess yourself up with bitterness.

Life is full of troubles. Always was.
Don’t add to it by calculating whether yours
are somebody’s fault.

The only one who can dishonor your soul is you.
Don’t do that for anybody. Carry on
as if you have been honored. Because you are.

What if there is only one forgiveness, yours and theirs,
and it’s not divided? What if they are as forgiven as you—
and you are infinitely so? Will you accept it?

You have both been rescued and are fighting for a place
in a lifeboat that is not yours,
a boat much more spacious than yours.

What if your compassion were so great
that you loved them despite their misdeeds?
Or is that lack what you’re really angry about?

         
         
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

         
                  

Friend,
I am the darkness
into which you flow
and so become your light.

I am the silence in which
your voice echos.

I am the door
where the three strangers enter my life.

I am the crack through which
the whole world seeps in.

I am the pitcher
into which you pour yourself
and pour out into the world.

I am the garden
where you are buried.

I am the friend you reach for
in the dark.

I am the lover
you are so passionate about.

I am the one you have so taken for yourself
that all I can say of myself is
I Am.

                  •

         
         

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

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