Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         
I’m writing this while staying up late, watching the lunar eclipse with Jonathan. The moon, lightly veiled by clouds, but still visible, is slowly swallowed by darkness. Life is sometimes like that.

I’m keeping vigil. Not that the moon needs me to make it through the darkness, just that it feels right to keep it company and bless its darkness.

It’s the winter solstice. Not since 1638, 465 years ago, has an eclipse come on the winter solstice. (A fascinating aside: scientists don’t know the next time this will happen. They’re in the dark.) This is the year’s shortest day, the day of the most darkness. From now on, the days are getting longer. The darkness is slowly swallowed by light.

Dualistic thinkers see here a battle between good and evil. But darkness is not evil. It’s just a place where we can’t see, that’s all. And it’s not a battle. It’s a dance. They both surge in and out, back and forth, turning around each other. The darkness shines in the light, and the light cannot overcome it.

Paradoxically, although the winter solstice promises the return of the light, it marks the beginning of winter. Even as it’s getting lighter it’s getting colder. Dark and light, warmth and cold balance each other, complete each other, need each other. Life is sometimes like that.

It wouldn’t be the Christmas story without the darkness. An angel comes to Joseph in a dream. Magi follow a star in the night sky. The heavenly host comes to shepherds watching their flock by night. God comes to us in our darkness. God accompanies us in our darkness, and blesses it.

When you love those who suffer, you can’t necessarily abolish their darkness. But you can keep vigil. You can accompany them and bless their night.

Don’t be afraid to enter the darkness. Grace happens there. God is there. And there, in the darkness, you can see the light return. In the darkness, light shines.

As it turns out, clouds swallowed the eclipse. We didn’t see much. But it was fun to stay up and watch together. Life is like that. And so is God.
         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Christmas Lights

The people who walked in darkness
         have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
         on them light has shined.
                 — Isaiah 9.2
 
Little lights they are, mostly,
strung in trees and tacked along eaves:
small lights that couldn’t light a room,
and yet they brighten the street
and beautify the whole neighborhood.
 
A small light you may be,
but be a light anyway,
an Advent candle,
a radiant sign of the coming of Christ,
shining Christ’s grace.
Someone walking in deep darkness
will see, and give thanks.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         

A little child shall lead them…
and they will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain.
         •

Christ did not count equality with God
a thing to be grasped,
but in self-emptying took the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
         •

Blessed are the gentle,
for they shall inherit the earth.
         •

Love is patient; love is kind.
         •

Love your enemies.
         •

You must become as a child
to enter the Realm of God.
         •

You shall find a child,
wrapped in swaddling cloths,
lying in a manger.
         •

God comes as a baby
to draw out our tenderness.
Hold the child gently
in all that you do.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         
         An angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said,
         “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife,
         for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.”
                  — Matthew 1.21

Joseph.
Joseph, awake.

Wake from your sleep of knowing everything, your dream of not having to look.
Instead, look anew. I have hidden blessing in your life, wonder concealed in what you reject, glory waiting on the path you resist.

I know, you want to understand, and to control things, and this is beyond those.
You are afraid of what others will think. But that is not real. This is real: I am asking you to be faithful without proof, loving without assurance, humble without protection. I am asking you to trust.

Learn to listen in a way that the world can’t teach you. Learn to know in a way that is not how the world knows. Learn to follow a path the world can’t see.

Mary is on a quest, discovering the blessing and wonder that I have created in her. Do the same for yourself. Look within. Listen to your dreams. Give your heart a voice. Trust the magnificence of what I desire for you. Never mind people’s expectations. Follow my delight. Do not be afraid to change your plans, to risk, to sacrifice, to commit.

Joseph, never mind being right. Commit to love. Marry blessing and faithfulness. Marry your doubts. Marry wonder. Marry unknowing. Marry not being afraid.

Joseph, awake. I have hidden blessing in your life. Take it as your own, and know my joy.
Shalom.

         When Joseph awoke from sleep,
         he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him.
                  — Mt. 1.21

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

O Christmas saints, come gather here
         in my Bethlehem:
         let the miracle unfold in me.

Come, Gabriel, interrupting angel,
         and tell the innocent Virgin within me
         that she shall bear holiness into the world.

Come, dreams, and haunt me with the courage
         to marry the blessing I would spurn.

Come, tender Joseph, and walk with me
         along this road of not knowing.

Come, natal star, build your nest in my darkness,
         and guide me to seek, and keep seeking.
Mark my life with your promise
         that beauty may be found here.

Come, magi, from your wanderings,
         and teach me to follow;
         teach me to behold.

Come heavenly choir, breathing wonder:
         Astonish my routine. Awaken me.
Send me into this village
         looking, looking.

Come, shepherds and all who are shabby and shady,
         and show me how to recognize glory
         swaddled in the mundane.

Come, Holy Child, and be alive in me,
         wordlessly, helplessly
         drawing out all my love.

O Christmas miracle,
         come to the the little shed of my life;
enfold me in your strangeness
         and make me a house of wonder.

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.

Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel,
which means “God is with us.”
— Matthew 1.23

God does not live in outer space.  The wonder of the Holy Trinity is that God is not only infinite but also incarnate.  God, who is pure love, lives within all loving souls. The birth of Jesus reveals God in human flesh, in human love, in human presence.  And Jesus is not an exception.  God is fully present in all of us in love. “The Realm of God is among you.”

Imagine God, present and loving, within you.  God lives and reigns in your heart. Your soul is the manger in which the Christ child lies, from which he looks upon the world.  Your heart is the throne from which God reigns with unconquerable gentleness and infinitely deep compassion.

As you go through your day today, the whole glory of heaven radiates from within you.  The presence of God gives you life; it is your pulse, your breath, your awareness.  Live in harmony with God’s presence within you.  Act and speak in harmony with God’s delight in you.  Let every breath be God praying in you.

As you prepare for the coming of Christ, don’t think that it’s going to be just a sweet baby born one night long ago.  It’s God’s incarnation—God’s inhabitation—in Jesus, and also in us. 
 
How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given;
so God imparts to human hearts the wonders of his heaven.
No ear may hear his coming, but in this world of sin,
where meek souls will receive him, still the dear Christ enters in.

O holy child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray.
Cast out our sin and enter in; be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel.
— O Little Town of Bethlehem

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         

Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel,
which means “God is with us.”
         — Matthew 1.23

God is not against us,
         but with us.
For us.

God is not above us,
         but with us.
Among us.

God is not separate from us
         but with us.
Within us.

We will not find the Divine
by gazing into heaven
but by attending to our lives,
our hearts, our relationships—
looking to the human mystery
and the wild love married to us,
the delighted presence
even now walking hand in hand
with us.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

         
         

O Coming One,
give me a steadfast spirit
to wait for you with grace.

Give me patience to listen
for your breathing
in the breath of your people.

Give me courage to trust
your continually blossoming presence
even in the unseeing darkness.

Give me wisdom to see
your manger in rough places,
your star in dark nights.

Give me gentleness
to receive you as a child
amidst the shouting of kings and warriors.

O Blossoming One, you are the love
with which I wait tenderly
for the coming of your love.

O Holy Child, come to me
that I may fall in love with you,
and become wholly yours,
in faith, in love, in steadfast hope.
Amen.

         
         

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         

Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains.
         — James 5.7

The great scandal of incarnation is than in choosing to live in us, God assents to our vulnerability, suffering and finitude. God does not come in a palace, powerful and safe, but in a shoddy stable, in a lowly manger, poor and at risk. God willingly, lovingly lives in all that is not well in us. God lives in our hurt and our failure. Our pain and weakness, our anger and bewilderment, our lack of faith, this is the manger where Christ comes. God takes up a dwelling in our lives with great love, with tender delight and unflappable patience.

In entering into the heart of all that is, God enters as well all that is not yet. God is in all that is not right, not just, not healed, not yet finished. Mary sings of the transformation of our society, when the hungry are fed. Isaiah sees the desert blossom and all the exiles return. This has not happened yet. But God comes already anyway, and waits with us as grace unfolds among and within us.

In Advent we enter into God’s great patience. We enter into the healing of the world and we wait with God, who waits with us. We enter into the pain and the not knowing, the loneliness and the despair, and because God is there, we find hope and tenderness. We trust that what we await will surely come, and that even in our waiting God is already present.

Be patient and wait. Know that God is waiting with us with patience as well, and with great love and unimaginable power.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         
And Mary said,
“My soul magnifies the Lord,
         who has looked with favor on me in my lowliness.
The Mighty One has scattered the proud
                  in the thoughts of their hearts.
God has has brought down
                  the powerful from their thrones,
         and lifted up the lowly;
God has filled the hungry with good things,
         and sent the rich away empty.”
                  — from Luke 1. 46-55

Mary is not singing about some metaphor. She is singing about us. We adore heroes and powerful people. We love to pretend that the Bible says (though it doesn’t) that “God helps those who helps themselves.” We cut benefits for the unemployed and give tax breaks to the rich. The cost to end hunger throughout the world is estimated at somewhere around $200 billion a year. Americans will spend $500 billion on Christmas. Yeah, that’s us she’s talking about.

The Magnificat is no sweet lullaby. It is a fierce revolutionary cry against our fear and selfishness, and the political and economic structures that are built on money, power and coercion. And it’s not just a promise of better times for the underdogs. God not only lifts up the lowly but brings down the powerful. And, most radical of all, it is not a dream, a wish, a hope for the future. It’s already been done; it’s an accomplished fact. God has brought down the powerful and fed the hungry.

Oh, yeah? It sure looks like the hungry are still hungry and the powerful are still powerful. —But that’s where we’re wrong. The promise of Christmas is that God comes among us in a revolutionary, life-changing way that transforms both our souls and our society—and that most of the world either will resist it or won’t get it at all. But Advent invites us to see what’s already here but unseen, to receive what’s already been given but not received. Mary invites us to see God’s favor for the poor, to see God’s presence in the lowly, and to see how the selfishly rich and powerful have condemned themselves to lives of emptiness and grief without knowing it. Advent invites us to join contemplation and justice in that mystery we call incarnation: God’s real presence among us in human flesh, the flesh of our companions on this earth: in a poor homeless peasant child laid in a feeding bin, a refugee family fleeing violence, a child among soldiers.

Jesus says, “Go and tell what you see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them” (Mt. 11.5). In Advent we who are blind to God’s presence learn to see; we who are deaf to the good news begin to hear; we who think we understand have something new brought to us. God breaks in like a birth, like a death, and changes everything. God reverses the ways of the world.

This Advent contemplate this mystery: that what is done is hidden in what is not yet, that God’s blessing is hidden in powerlessness, that God’s judgment is masked by riches and power, that God’s presence is embodied among the lowly, that God’s Christ is born among the poor. This Advent contemplate the birth of the Prince of Peace, the Servant of Justice among us, whom we cannot see, but who is already here, reigning in the great power of his mercy.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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