Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love…. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another…. Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.
                  —1 John 4. 7-8, 11, 20-21

The word “love” appears 28 times in this passage from 1 John. Can there be any doubt that the heart of Christianity is to love as Christ has loved us? It is not to believe certain things, to be right about doctrinal matters, but to love. You may argue about theology with someone who is totally wrong, but unless you do it with love, you’re totally wrong. You can’t condemn those who are evil; all you can do is love them. The talk you will hear about God “hating” certain sinners is nothing more than a sad projection of people’s hate onto God. God is love, not hate. God is not even a little love watered down with some judgment and hate, but pure, infinite unconditional love. And faith means living in that love, with that love, unconditionally.

I think of my friends and colleagues at our General Conference these days, the global gathering of United Methodists we hold every four years. We argue about things like rules and budgets and church structure and, of course, homosexuality. (Webster: church, n. A group of people who hear about love and argue about sex and money.) There always seems to be a lot of fear at those gatherings, a lot of judgment, a lot of anger (I’ve been to four of them). I bet Jesus is sad.

Friends, it’s not about being right. It’s not about winning the argument. It’s not about preserving the institution of the church. It’s about loving people. Loving bigots and queers and tyrants and welfare queens and children and child soldiers and child molesters and neighbors and strangers and ourselves, like Jesus did, even loving those who you believe are destroying the church, or the world. If we don’t love, love actually, in practice, for real—then the rest of or faith is just cheap wrapping paper and we should throw it away.

Practice love today. Stand for justice, speak the truth, embrace the outcast, cry out for the voiceless, confront the powers, sound the trumpets so the walls may come down; but do it with love. That alone will cleanse our souls, reform the church, and save the world. Love as the crucified Christ has loved us, and you will know resurrection.
      
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         

Does the branch pray to the tree?

Does the little limb think
of the great root buried in its grave,
the wine poured up
through the sturdy chalice of the trunk?
Does the leaf seek the will
of the seed, or contemplate
the shape of the body,
the arms spread out over the earth?
Does the bud seek guidance
or understand its place
in the miracles and teachings of the seasons?

I don’t know about that;
only this:

in the branch the leaf opens,
the blossom unfolds,
the fruit swells.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         

Heaven is a shy bird.

If you march out and demand a song
you will hear nothing.

But sit still for a long time,
again and again, and let your waiting
spread a safe, green meadow of silence,

and because you have waited—
not for your own sake but for her—
she will sing.

         

         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
       
When we pray for God our shepherd to lead us, we usually have green pastures in mind. But when Peter and James healed a paralytic, preached to the crowd, and testified to the authorities who arrested them, they didn’t do this out of their own personal desire; they did it because God led them to. God didn’t exactly lead them beside still waters.

Our lives are richest in blessing, peace and vibrancy when we live not according to our own impulses, but in harmony with God’s grace. Whether it is toward peaceful rest or challenging action, God leads us from within, guiding, nudging, sometimes compelling us, and leads us from without, alluring, beckoning, pleading, needing us. We much prefer going our own way, of course? so we do what we can to ignore God’s shepherding. One way is to believe that God is on our side, so that we don’t feel the need to listen to God. We already know. Another way is to limit our faith to ideas, so that we can “believe” without actually acting. Another escape is to be busy, so that we believe we can’t afford to slow down as much as is needed to listen to God. Many believers are so sure and busy that if God really is a shepherd, they’re atheists.

You will not likely know God’s will for your life by pushing hard. You’re more likely to find out by listening for the voice of your shepherd and following. Whether you feel the need to stand up and act or lie down and rest, let God shepherd you. Let the Spirit within you and in others speak to you. Let God’s “rod and staff” gently lead you. Rather than deciding where you ought to be, discern where your shepherd is, and be there. Renounce all your ideas of where God ought to lead you. Let the shepherd decide. In stillness, listen. In openness, wait to hear. In humble trust, resolve to follow the shepherd before you know where he’s going.

Don’t resist when the shepherd leads you either to pastures greener than you think you deserve or valleys darker than you think you can handle. If you are with your shepherd, you are in the right place. You are in “the house of the Lord.” Listen, trust and follow. And don’t worry about saving the world. That’s God’s job. Neither shrink back in despair nor run ahead on your own; just stay with the shepherd. Just show up and take your place in the flock, where God needs you. Surely goodness and mercy will follow you all the days of your life.

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

A prayer for nonviolence

Gentle companion, shepherd me today,
beyond my fears and wants.
Make me let go and rest
in the green pasture of your grace.
Lead me along still waters.
Breathe life into my soul.
Lead me in the path of loving kindness
for the sake of your delight for the world.

Even in my darkest valleys,
shadowed by death,
in my fear of evil,
you will be with me;
your presence and guidance
are my only security.

Bring me to the table you set
with my enemies.
Drench me in your gentleness.
May I overflow with your grace.
May kindness and mercy be with me
all this day;
may I live in your eternal presence
each moment.
Amen.

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.

As I write this I am sitting in my sister’s house in Montana watching the sun rise over the Elkhorn Mountains. The mountains are just waking up, opening their snow-topped eyes. A scattered herd of clouds grazes in the southeast. The sun sits there just behind the ridge with his bathrobe on. And in the pasture up the hill a horse is sitting, watching, and some elk are grazing. At first I thought they were all the neighbor’s horses, but five of them are elk, gradually moving this way. It’s quiet.

We are led to lie down in greener pastures than we think, surrounded by a wider, deeper blessing than we notice or trust. We complain about rushing around, but we can lie down. We are accompanied by others who are different from us, but there is no reason the horses and the elk can’t graze in the same pasture. When Jesus said there would be one flock, he didn’t mean we would all be the same. But we do all belong to one Creation, to one God. It’s not easy, as attached as we are to getting where we’re going, to lie down, to appreciate the wonder of the world, to let others lie down in our world. But that’s actually the way it is. We are shepherded. We are grazing in green pastures whether we know it or not. We are part of one flock, whether we see it or not. And it’s a quiet morning.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

______________________

Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.

         
         We know that we have passed from death to life
         because we love one another.
                  —1 John 3.14

You can die from holding your breath forever.

Breathe out the love God breathes into you;
that is living.

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         

         “I am the good shepherd.
         The good shepherd
         lays down his life for the sheep.”
                  —John 10.11

Oh, Jesus,
I want you to be mighty,
to rescue me from all danger
and vanquish my enemies,

but you are not there
on that throne.
You have gone
and laid down your life for me.

What do I do
now that I am
this beloved,
now that you are
beneath me?

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.

See what love the Mother- Father has given us,
          that we should be called children of God;
          and that is what we are.
The reason the world does not know us
          is that it did not know God.
Beloved, we are God’s children now;
          what we will be has not yet been revealed.
What we do know is this: when God is revealed,
          we will be like God,
          for we will see God as God is.
And all who have this hope in God
          purify themselves, just as God is pure.
                    –1 John 3.1-3

Like a mother with her newborn infant,
God does not demand anything of us,
but purely loves us, for our own sake.

We are created like her,
made of her loving kindness.
The unseen, immutable truth
shines in all things visible.

Become the love of God,
the love that you are.

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         

         Yom HaShoah
            Holocaust Remembrance Day

Children in a line
    disappear one by one
        through a sooty door.

Who remembers
    what they are leaving,
        who they used to be?

Our fear is the fuel
    for the furnace.
        There is always more.

Forgiveness comes,
    but first we are stripped
        of our forgetfulness,

standing naked in line,
    breathing the foul air.
        There is no demarcation

between any of us now.
    A pile of ragged things
        we once clung to.

Who remembers
    who we used to be?
        They go first; we may follow:

children in a line
    disappear one by one
        into the mercy of God.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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