Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         
I’m not in these woods to get anywhere
but to be here,
to lay my eyes on these trees
softly changing
radiant with the mystery
that’s going on inside,
to let leaves fall on me,
to be one of the creatures here,
to stop thinking that I see
and start seeing,
let my mind go fritter with the squirrels,
let them all go,
and not ponder being here but simply
be here.

I could sit by the sea for hours,
sit on a sandstone bluff overlooking the desert,
sit on a mountain crag
without needing to communicate or accomplish
or understand or be elsewhere,
but just to be there.

So I am with God:
not to say anything,
or think something,
to apprehend or convey anything,
but purely to be here,
in this now,
in this here,
in this God.

I could sit here for hours,
even in these few minutes,
and all day long I have leaves in my hair.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.

When the Lord your God has brought you into the land that God swore to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—a land with fine, large cities that you did not build, houses filled with all sorts of goods that you did not fill, hewn cisterns that you did not hew, vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant—and when you have eaten your fill, take care that you do not forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
?Deuteronomy 6. 10-12

If we are honest in our relationship with the world, we are mindful that everything is a gift; we have not earned anything that others have not labored for; we do not posses anything for which others have not had to sacrifice. If we read Israel’s history, or America’s, with imperialist eyes, we can believe that God “gave” us these lands, rather than that we stole them from native people. We can forget that our goods, our ease and our freedom come from beyond us.

This doesn’t mean we ought to live in guilt, nor should we live in the past. It’s an invitation to humility, gratitude and simplicity, a deeper awareness and a more heartfelt generosity. This mindfulness says: hold your possessions lightly, since they’re not really yours, anyway. Be gratefully aware of the great web of creation that sustains you: the people who provide your goods, the unseen thousands who maintain the world you live in, the creatures who offer, or become, your food. Contribute to creation rather than merely being a consumer. Avoid thinking that your ease is the greatest value.

Resist the temptation of arrogance with the awareness that you depend upon stolen land, plundered goods and exploited lives. Devote yourself to justice on behalf those upon whose suffering or sacrifice your ease or goods depend. Honor those whose land, rights, livelihood, health and even lives have been taken in the name of your country or your comfort. Repent of your complicity in injustice and oppression, and as much as is possible, refuse to participate in such systems.

Notice today whose labor, sacrifice or suffering is someone else’s gain. Take note, and let it return you to humility, gratitude and generosity.

That we live in such a fine land and enjoy so many fine things is neither our destiny nor our deserving, but a gift. Be grateful, humble and generous, then, and devote yourself to justice for those from whom such gifts are withheld by the very systems that so richly endow us. Above all, be generous. What you have is not yours, but a gift, so give.

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and peace to you.

You will reach the new life

not on the land of assurance
but on the sea of mystery,

not by believing what you have been told
but by going to a place you do not know,

not in speculation
but in sailing off into the silence.

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         A meditation on Matthew 22.1-13

The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come.

         • Maybe life is not a test, but a party.
         • Perhaps Judgment Day is not a trial, but a wedding.
         • It could be that what it’s all about is not success but love and faithfulness.
         • What if God’s Word is not a command but an invitation?

Then he said to his slaves, “Go into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.” Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.

         • It’s possible that what God most wants of you is not to be “good” but to be present.
         • Imagine that everyone else is also invited, and being present for God is being present for others.
         • Consider that when we judge others as not worthy to sit with, it is we ourselves whom we exclude from the Realm of Heaven; we are the ones who will not come.

When the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to the attendants, “Throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” For many are called, but few are chosen.

         • What if righteousness is not purity but wonder?
         • Maybe many are grudgingly obedient but few are joyful.
         • Ponder this, that since the invitation may come at any moment, we should be dressed for the party at all times: our hearts clothed with joy, prepared to celebrate, ready to rejoice in the gift of faithful love, not on some distant day, but right now.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

         
         
Loving One,
I open my heart to you,
a window open to the morning sun,
and you flood me with your gentle compassion.

You love me when I am in harmony with you
and when I am not.
You accompany me in easy times and hard.
And you have created me to love:
not to be pleased, or to get my way, or to be right,
but to love all beings with your love.

Grant me your steadiness,
to care most that I love, not that I be satisfied.
May I shine with compassion all this day,
extending loving kindness to all,
to those who are pleasant and those who are not,
in ease and difficulty,
free of judging,
desiring only to love all beings
with your unflappable love.

Amen.

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         

Our little minds in their lab coats
pick away at the darkness,
unearthing, mapping, putting up lights,
toward the day when all is revealed.

They can’t know
that God is creating mystery
faster than we can explore it.

______________________

Weather Report

Acceptance,
with flurries of wonder,
as a thick layer of divine presence
settles over the area,
obscured by our desire to understand.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         

The trees presenting their offerings,
the rumple of weeds like children
hanging on the neck of the brook,
the host that pours through the city
are not merely here,
not simply stumbled upon,
I have given them to you.

This day, its delights, its troubles,
your whole life, your death,
this moment,
are not happenstance or imposed,
they are what I wear.

What you encounter in this world
is not here of its own accord
or for its own sake,
it is how I give myself to you.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.

May God turn your life splendid colors.

May angels heading south,
         honking overhead in long V’s,
         make you wonder.

May storms drive you inside,
         where God is warm.

May your losses
         open up new vistas.

May God show up at your doorstep
         in outrageous costumes.

May frost make beautiful
         all that is dying
         and may all that remains
         remain.

May your life be pressed
         into great cider.

_____________________

Weather Report

Changeable,
as low pressure generates winds
that strip you of things.
Seasonal shifts will produce
brilliant, fleeting effects,
none of which will last.
100% chance of the present moment.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         
In the beginning was the Silence,
and the Silence was with God,
and the Silence was God.
All things have come into being
out of the Silence.

Sound waves radiate out from their source,
farther and farther into the distance,
but the Silence
remains at the center.

In sound and words,
and in ideas, the noises of the mind,
you will hear of God,

but only when you return
to the Silence at the center

will you meet God.

         

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

         
         
There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way. Finally he sent his son to them, saying, “They will respect my son.” But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, “This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.” So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.
         —Matthew 21. 33-39

God, I confess that have seized the vineyard of my soul, as if it were mine, as if I were the one who had dug and planted, and built a fence and a watchtower. But my soul is not “mine,” it is yours. You create me, and give me the growth. You are the one who creates the fertile soil of my being, who plants within me the seed of your Spirit. You grow within me. The fruit of my soul is yours, not mine.

But because you seem distant, and your absence is painful, and because I want to control my life, I have usurped what is truly yours. I have laid claim to your vineyard, and done violence to your trust in me. This is my unending struggle, to let go of my own soul, to let it truly be yours, to overcome my illusion that it ought to be mine, and that I can wrest it from you and have it for myself.

Forgive me, and instill in me a desire to bear fruit for you rather than to control my life. Heal my fear of your absence, my desire for control. Give me faith to meet my fear and grasping with courage and trust. May I be a faithful worker in the vineyard of my own soul, nurturing and gathering what you give, offering to you and not hoarding for myself the fruits of my heart. God grant me a good harvest, and peace. Amen.

         
         

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