Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.

The spirit of Osama bin Laden is alive and well, among his followers who wish destruction and shout and wave guns and banners at us, and among his enemies, who wish destruction and shout and wave guns and flags at them. When in a fit of humanness we wish ill of terrorists, we become them. When we rejoice in their death, we join them in dividing the world. We project our fear and anger onto others. We think evil thoughts.

Fear is the root of all evil. More fear, even the fear of evil, even fear disguised as anger at evil, will not change things. According to scripture, it is only love that casts out fear.

The trouble with evil thoughts is not that they are bad for us, but that we are so mean to them. Like evil people, we judge them and despise them (that is, we fear them) and try to get rid of them. We think evil of them! But we are not responsible for the thoughts that leap into our minds. Nor do we have to identify with them and feed them. Just let them come and go. We can lovingly respect even our evil thoughts, as members of the heavenly host of our imaginations. In fact, our evil thoughts balance out our pious thoughts and maintain the ecosystem of our psyches. Evil thoughts are the flies and maggots of the mind. They’re disgusting, but they keep it clean.

Rather than being ashamed of our evil thoughts and trying to suppress them (which is a way of feeding them, focusing on them and remaining attached to them) we can accept them, confess them, surrender them to God, let go and move on. It’s not thinking evil, but letting go of evil, that sets us apart from terrorists.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

“Were not our hearts burning within us
while he was talking to us on the road?”
        —Luke 24.32

 

A song you didn’t hear,
ringing in your ears.

Anticipation of a kiss, its
memory, its warmth already fading.

Wakefulness that’s not your own.
A silent accompaniment.

A resonance vibrating in your chest
that makes you look around.

An answer, unprovoked,
a tendril reaching as if for light.

Something about “kingdom
among you,” ungrasped, firm.

An echo following the silence,
always just out of sight.

A sure, embracing presence
beyond the door, the sky, within.

The collapse of a stranger’s strangeness,
a tenderness, an urge to bow.

This impossible reverence rising in you,
belovedness passing through you like blood

as if Someone is here.

 

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         
         

May you be given eyes to see
in all that is bare and ordinary in you
an extravagant blossoming.

May your presence be a blessing,
that others may feel with you
as if they have awakened
to a lovely spring day.

May your gifts suddenly bloom
in colors beyond your imagining.

May the swans of God’s grace
descend upon your pond
and build nests there,
and raise their young.

May your whole earth
inside and out
be made new.

         

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         
         
Christ arose
not into the air
(the air doesn’t need him)
but into people.

         
The bare trees on the hillside
meditate in the spring breeze,
calmly holding little
explosions in their hands.

         

Are you ready
to be so changed?
         

         
         
____________________
Weather Report

Becoming,
as completely as a spring day
is transformed from dreary to bright
by forces from beyond.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         
Jesus said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side.
         — John 20. 27

A risen Jesus with wounds still fresh can seem startling— shouldn’t he be perfect and shining like everybody in heaven? Raised from death, shouldn’t he be free of all suffering?

No. Suffering is a part of life. It is surely a part of love—the willingness to give of oneself even at cost. Life is a journey of vulnerability, and even in resurrection wounds do not suddenly vanish. What vanishes is their power to limit us, define us, or defeat us. Suffering does not end; it just doesn’t have the last word. Love has the last word. Our sin, pain, and even death are swallowed up in a greater reality, suffused with blessing, subject to grace, and powerless against the life-giving power of love. Even in our brokenness we are glorious; even in our suffering we belong to life, not death; even in our sin we are the way God loves us.

Resurrection is not about feeling good. It’s about our communion with God and our deep connection with life. It is God’s victory over all that could separate us from God and from life. It does not remove us from the struggles of life; it prevents them from removing us from life and from God. Like Jesus, we are wounded, and even wounded, we are raised to eternal life.
         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and peace to you.

Jesus said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
—John 21.27-28

You don’t need to be good enough.
You need to be real.
You don’t have to display your wounds,
but through them God can reveal glory.
In your vulnerability and humanness,
in your failures and brokenness,
in the calluses from your labors
and the scars from the journeys you have made,
and in the grace with which God has brought you through
people may find a connection
with a healing, resurrecting God.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Thomas said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands
and put my finger where the nails were,
and put my hand into his side,
I will not believe it.”
     —John 20. 25

When Jesus wanted to go to Bethany to see Lazarus, his disciples worried that that was where people wanted to kill him. One of them said, “Let’s go also, so that we may die with him.”  That was Thomas.  Thomas was no doubter.  He knew the depth of Jesus’ love, love that would suffer in self-giving.  That’s why after his death he wasn’t interested in Jesus’ alluring smile or his famous way of breaking bread.  What he was interested in was his wounds.  Because Thomas knew Jesus was capable of a love that neither avoided suffering nor succumbed to it, but that transformed it.  He wanted to connect with Jesus’ suffering—to touch his wounds— in order to love him more deeply, just as Jesus had done.  Nothing less than that suffering self-giving would do for Thomas to “believe.”

In a way what Thomas was looking for was his own wounds— and for their transformation: his fear forgiven, failure redeemed and brokenness made holy.  He wasn’t looking for evidence of Jesus’ resurrection, but his own.  A perfect, unhurt and invincible Jesus who said, “Oh, it was nothing,” could not stir his heart. But one who had suffered deeply and still forgiven him would call Thomas back to life and revive his love.

Unless we embrace another’s suffering, and have forgiven the deepest wounds they have caused us, we have not fully loved them.  Suffering itself is not redemptive.  But reaching out to another in their suffering, and forgiving one who causes you suffering is the place where love happens. Resurrection does not remove suffering; it transforms it from a wall into a doorway.  With Thomas we reach out to the wounds of the world, receive forgiveness, and learn to love.

—April 27, 2011

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         
In great mercy God has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you. In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials.
         —1 Peter 1.3-4, 6

What do you think “heaven” is like? A place of infinite joy and glory, a place where God is always and everywhere intimately present? A place where souls continually grow in love of God and one another? A world in which God’s miracles are abundant, sin and death are defeated and forgiveness is the very air? Well, what the resurrection of Christ says is that this is it. We are in a changed world.

Expectant parents know what it’s like. You live in a reality you haven’t actually seen yet. But it’s wholly real, and it changes everything. The resurrection of Christ is not just a promise that you get to go to “heaven” when you die. It’s a moment of clarity that heaven is at the heart of this world. It unveils the reality that God, who brings creation out of chaos and life out of death with loving grace, is actually the dominant force in the universe. Despite the appearances of this world, the anxious workings of our ego-minds, and the powers of this world that magnify them, despite the ravages of evil, fear and suffering, it is God and not they who reign supreme.

Even in this troubled world, we live in heaven. We haven’t learned to see it yet, but it is present, not just in the future, but here and now. The love of God throbs at the heart of all living things. The grace of God flows like electricity through all Creation. Forgiveness is like gravity, drawing us back into the present moment.

So we learn to live in this invisible world of grace that is hidden inside the visible world. We live with this inheritance, this belonging, that is already ours, cherished in the heart of Being itself. The troubles of this world don’t discourage us from our hope, because our hope is not wishing for what hasn’t come, but confidence in what hasn’t been revealed. The evils of this world do not intimidate us from seeking justice and resisting oppression, because we know that infinite power is on the side of liberation, reconciliation and healing. We learn to live as those who are newly born, with new eyes, with hope and wonder, love and courage. We love without fear, knowing that we’ve already died and gone to heaven.

Welcome!
         
         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         
Christ is risen!

God has come among us in gentleness.
We have responded by assaulting
the Lamb of God with all our fear and violence—
and it has failed: God’s gentleness has prevailed.
Our violence has died, but forgiveness endures.

Christ is risen!

The angry mob has become dust,
and even the mighty Empire has vanished,
but the Loving One lives on.

Christ is risen!

Love is stronger than evil.
Gentleness is mightier than coercion.
Forgiveness is greater than fear.

Christ is risen!

The power of death is an illusion;
the machines of oppression are a sham,
but the grace of God is infinite,
and raises you to life that is eternal.

Christ is risen!

Love deeply, therefore,
and seek justice with courage;
bless and forgive extravagantly,
and be gentle without fear,
for Christ, the Gentle One, is risen.
Christ is risen indeed!

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         
God of love,
at the foot of the cross
we confess our violence,
our desire to make others
carry our suffering.
Forgive us.

We confess our fear,
our illusion of our unworthiness,
our anxiety to justify ourselves
rather than to love.
Forgive us.

We confess our self-centeredness:
that other people become
means or obstacles to our ends
instead of people,
sacred and beloved.
We hurt and judge,
we exploit and dehumanize.
We think that we or others
are unworthy.
We betray your love in us
and we crucify.
Forgive us.

At the foot of the cross
we behold this mystery:
that broken as we are,
we are sacred and beloved,
and you cherish us.
In our darkest violence
you forgive us.
In our deepest shame
you give yourself to us.
In our most adamant betrayals
you are one with us.

At the foot of the cross
give us the gift of sorrow,
the wisdom of an unflinching gaze.
Bless us, that we may know our brokenness,
that we may receive your presence,
that we may accept your forgiveness,
that we may be transformed by your love.

We pray for those whom we have hurt,
and bless those who have hurt us.
We ask and receive forgiveness of all.
We seek only to trust, only to love,
only to heal and to be healed.

At the foot of the cross,
may we die to our fear,
our self-centeredness,
our separation from others.
Take our old, mean lives
and give us new ones,
tender as new green shoots,
lives of grace,
lives of love, mercy and tenderness.

At the foot of the cross,
O gentle God,
may we die with Christ,
that you may raise us up in love.

Amen.
         

         

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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