Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.

In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!”
— John 2.14-16

You come before God with nothing.
No coins of accomplishment,
no doves of contrition,
nothing adequate to satisfy God.
No one’s loss, even cattle and sheep,
can save you,
no theft can pay back your theft,
no violence cover your violence,
no fracture replace your brokenness.
You come before God naked
and empty-handed.
No invocation can uphold you,
no offering present you,
no chant or incantation protect you.

The temple is empty.
The temple is silence.
The temple is presence.

With no reason
the Loving One receives you
and holds you
in perfect stillness.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

__________________

Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         

Shadows open their eyes
         and cast unseeing
                  dark across my movements.

I didn’t even know that
         somewhere buried in here
                  is light.

The axe murderer,
         not knowing why, chops
                  wood and gives it away.

Under the snow
         so many tender living things,
                  waiting.

         
         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.

         

He was in the wilderness forty days,
tempted by Satan.
—Mark 1.13

         

You who shadow me
you are the part of me
that is afraid to be me

the part who does not believe
in who I am
or trust that it is enough

Anxious One, always needing
needing to prove
needing to possess

I will hear you
for I cannot silence you
But I will not obey

I will sit with you, still
I will learn to walk through you
like a shadow

For I too have my secrets
hidden in plain sight:
I am not alone

Spirit fills me
Christ accompanies me
You have no power

I Am
this is sufficient
and God’s doing, not yours or mine

Dear Shadow, poor thing
come sit with me
and be at peace.

         

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

God of Love,
God of Abraham’s wonder and Sarah’s laughter,
bear us in the heart of your hope;
birth us from the womb of your sacrifice;
hold us in the arms of your Covenant.
May your self-giving, which is our life,
give us gratitude for your grace,
courage to serve those who suffer,
and trust that we shall die and be raised
by the power of your love alone.
Gracious God, you who suffer for us
more deeply than we can imagine,
may we live and love faithfully
in the name of Christ. Amen.

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         
         
         Those who want to save their life will lose it,
         and those who lose their life for my sake,
         and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.
                  —Mark 8. 35

         
What you can hang onto
is the corpse.
What is life
is freely given.

         
         •

You are the cocoon;
love is the butterfly.
Which will you be?

         
         •

Life is what you receive
when you’ve given yours away in love.

         
         •

It’s when you sing the song
that it becomes beautiful.

         
         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,Grace and Peace to you.
         
         

Meditate slowly on these words.

Jesus said: Deny yourself
and take up your cross
and follow me.
—Mark 8. 34-37
         
         
         

Renounce the illusion that you are an isolated self

contained in your body alone.

Beloved, you live in God, and are a part of God,

a member of Christ’s body.

The Spirit in you is in all people,

with whom, in that Spirit, you are one.

Enlarge your loyalty from that illusory little “self”

to the whole.
         
         
         

Let the indwelling Spirit expand your heart

with God’s compassion,

compassion for all people.

In this loving kindness, be mindful

that you are given the willingness

to love all people, no matter the cost,

and even to suffer for them for the sake of love,

since your life is greater than your comfort.
         
         
         

In your willingness to suffer with others,

you are with Christ;

and wherever you go, the Faithful One is with you.

This is your deepest desire:

not to be securely self-contained,

but to be with God, in the most intimate way.

In compassion, even in suffering, this is your bliss.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

__________________

Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

Holy One,
Light of my shadows and Way of my wandering,
you are the desert in whom I find myself;
you are the presence in whom, in solitude, I am not alone.
Walk with me into the wilderness of my sin.
Expose what is hidden that I need to see;
receive what is broken, that it may be healed;
forgive what is hurtful,
and bless what returns me to life.
By your grace may I find in my shadows your glorious image,
and in my broken heart your crucified Christ.
For you are my only power, my only security,
and the source of my truest self.
Gracious and Loving One,
I walk through a valley of shadows and death:
you are with me, and I trust you. Amen.

         
         

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         
         And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.
         He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan;
         and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.
                  —Mark 1. 12-13

         
         
     

Go with him
into the deserted places
where mind won’t survive,

deep in your wilds, exposed,
with the beasts,
feral, shifty, wise

in their wordless ways,
their primal hungers,
their devouring instincts,

disappearing easily
into your canyons and outcroppings.
You don’t vanquish them,

you watch,
and learn to survive among them,
and witness the mystery,

how they lie down beside him.
Even they know
these washes and gulches

are a palm.
In this extremity,
you find your place

among your terrors,
your wastelands,
your angels.

         
         
     

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         
It’s not easy to tell people they’re going to die. It’s not easy to tell dozens of them, one by one, face to face. They came forward willingly, as if to hear something they wanted to hear. I marked their skulls. I smudged their foreheads with mud, with ashes mixed with oil. I looked them in the eyes. “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Old people not far from dusthood, some whose loved ones’ dust has only recently settled, young people hopefully far from it, a few who had narrowly escaped it, and many of them dear to me. I felt the loss as I marked their foreheads, as if I were doing dozens of funerals. Naming the dead. After a while it got sad. I wanted to quit.

But they kept coming. They kept facing their own mortality with calm beauty, with clear eyes, with beating hearts, strong hearts, loving hearts. They lived their lives, even if they were only as long as the line up the aisle, with courage and compassion. They carried their dust through the world with faith, leaning on Jesus, aware that they were nothing but dust and love, and ready to leave the dust behind.

I thought of the early Christians, marked with real crosses, walking lovingly to their death. I thought of Civil Rights marchers, facing violence with faith and courage. I came to believe that I was among a body of people around the globe who will live with love in the face of death, and whom therefore death cannot defeat. My own dust mattered little. It was the love I clung to.

What could I do but join them — to mark my forehead with the dust of death and the ashes of repentance, as one who has died, and walk out of my grave into the light?

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         

All that was precious
and heartfelt is nothing
but ashes,

a smudge
borne away
on your forehead, God.

I am dust
and to dust
I return,

in your hands,
awaiting
your breath.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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