Unfolding Light – Page 374 – Daily Reflections and Worship Resources

Things won’t work out

.
Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.

God, I’m worried that things won’t turn out
as I want them to.
So I’m grasping, clinging to little things,
little hopes, like remnants from a fire,
artifacts of an imagined world.
Meanwhile you pour out your presence to me.

What is this tinny little world I cling to?
Why am I hanging onto these trinkets?
What is this fear that I cherish so much?
Why am I afraid to stop and behold
your infinite abundance, laid secretly in my lap?

Does what I want lead me to abandon all things
and fall into your arms?
Is there something I want more than You?
What would it take for me to trade
what I am afraid of losing
for what can’t be taken from me?

I am standing by a clear, flowing river
nervously holding water in my cupped hands
that I have carried a long time.
Why don’t I drop it, walk in, and float away?

Deep Blessings,

Pastor Steve

_______________________________

Good morning

.
Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.

Wake up.
Be present to this world,
wakeful and attentive.

Rise from your bed.
Once again you are raised from death,
once again given the gift of life.

Throw back the curtains.
Let in all the light you can.
You have nothing to hide.

Look out the window.
Your purpose today is to witness
and to wonder.

Begin the day with gratitude,
just for this moment,
until it gets dark.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

_______________________________

Holy One

.
Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.

Holy One,
you are the softening of the dark
before the dawn,
you are my dawn, my light,
my day, my sight.

Divine Presence,
you are the thickness of things,
the substance of flesh,
the heft of tools,
the palpable earth,
my weight, my gravity.

Living Love,
you are all movement,
all flowing of breath and time,
of death and love
and scent and thought,
my blood and its lifelong
river pouring.

O Unseen Opening,
you are all wanting,
all thirst, receiving,
breathing in,
my hope.

O Mystery,
you are all emptiness,
silence, darkness and night,
my breathing out,
my death, and all
I will become
within you.

O Being
you are holy,
and I bow to you
in constant, humble joy.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

_______________________________

One

.
Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.

… That they may be one….
—John 17.20

Don’t be fooled by the illusion of distinctions,
the lie that we are separate,
that our either-or’s are real,
that we can think God and categorize What Is.
Don’t be taken by the theory that we are all
created by various gods from different worlds.

We are all fingers of the One hand,
words of the One song.
The Holy One contains us all.
We are one Body—not just believers
(who can judge, who can separate?)
or all who breathe long for God.
This whole universe, this one creation,
is but the speaking of God’s one Word.
In all its complex harmonies and flowings,
its growths and reflections, it is One.
There is only One thing,
and we all are of it.

We are bound with the stranger,
completed by our enemy,
blessed by the foreigner who practices
a strange religion, as they by us.
Unity is not a goal we strive for,
but the reality we struggle to see.

Holiness is not separation,
but deep belonging
to the Holy
One.

Deep Blessings,

Pastor Steve

_______________________________

Ascension Day

.
Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.

Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven.

—Luke 24. 50-51

Today is Ascension Day, 40 days after the resurrection when Jesus ascended to heaven. Clearly he has left. Yet he said, “I am with you always.” How do we make sense of this? It must be that Christ is with us in another form, not the body of Jesus of Nazareth. On Pentecost we will see the new form of Christ’s incarnation, the Body of Christ: not a person at all, but a community.

Christ is present, here, now. God, in love, is bodily present with you. Look around you. Look within you. Look slowly, and carefully. Let your prayer be a deepening, widening awareness. The Beloved will appear in forms you do not expect. Remember Jacob and his dream, and the disciples on the road to Emmaus: it is often only afterward that we realize that God has been present in ways we did not know. Christ doesn’t always look like Jesus. God doesn’t always look like God. The best we can do is to continually open the eyes of our hearts to the indwelling, surrounding, unseen presence of the Loving One.

Keep the eyes of your heart open.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

_______________________________

How to live

.
Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.

When all is stripped away
what is left is not what you cling to
nor what you have accomplished,
but how you live.
This is what you are here to perfect.

Start with:
wonder, gratitude,
patience, humility,
courage and kindness.

Each moment, practice.

The more you do ,
the more you become
rich beyond measure.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

_______________________________

Depths

.
Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.

The songs of whales enchant,
though the words escape us.

He knows what she said
but he is only beginning to hear it.

The garden lies empty and still,
but beneath, it is neither.

She smiles, while within lies
an underground lake.

The crayon squiggles hung on the fridge
look festive, rough, and random.

No telling what it actually means
to the mom who stuck it there,

or to the boy who drew
that empty green shape

with the dot in it,
that drooping blue line.

As when peering into a narrow hole,
we always block our own light.

The artist conjures the surface of things
precisely to get beyond it.

From an open window, blues sung low,
something stretching farther down

than you can reach.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

_______________________________

Rain

Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.

Present moment
neither good nor ill

growth erosion
dreaded long awaited

good for the farmer
bad for the parade

why judge?
walk out in it

get soaked know it
this way alone

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

_______________________________

God, the single mom

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.

The Mother will send the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, in my name…. Those who love me will keep my word, and my Mother will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them….

— John 14.26, 23

The Holy Trinity is a single parent family, right? And look— despite all the he-man talk, God is a mom. Aside from our sexist history, there’s really no reason to call God Father instead of Mother. God has no biology, no body parts, no x or y chromosomes. So the whole Mother/Father thing is all about social stereotypes. Well, doesn’t God fit the traditional stereotype of a mother? The one who births us, and nurses us with her own flesh, the one who taught us to walk. Not one who leaves home every day to work, but the one who stays with us to care for us. The one who feeds us, the one who talks with us, who weaves our relationships together, who tends us when we’re sick, who cries over us. Isn’t God more like the one who fusses over us rather than the one who taught us how to play football? As far as gender stereotypes go, God is way more like Mom.

Both our stereotypes and our theology need to change. But while dads learn to be more like what we’ve always expected of moms, God’s been doing it all along.

And she’s not only a homemaker, she’s a single mom. There’s a Son, and another (a daughter?)—but no other parent, no other authority, no one else for us to turn to or for her to fall back on. God is the resilient, resourceful, devoted single mom, the one who works hard to hold the family together, who balances work and family, who somehow pulls it all together. As we approach Mother’s Day I honor mothers, especially those who are single or functionally so, who give life and love, and who embody God’s grace.

In the name of the Mother, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Happy Mother’s Day.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

_______________________________

God running

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.

I am running
and God is running in me.
God is breathing deep and steady,
down in the darkness secretly
changing the air into life in me.
God is thumping in my chest,
pulling life through me, all of me.
God is taking a pounding down there,
feet slapping the road over and over,
never complaining, slender ankles
faithfully taking all my weight.
God is my sweat, pouring out of me
like love, like light.
God, you are that miraculous alchemy,
that unchoreographable dance
of oxygen, nerve firings, glucose,
adrenaline, muscle memory and will.
You are my momentum,
my balance, my movement,
my stamina.
Even when I’m awkward or tired
you are graceful in me,
strong and elegant and unflagging.
You are the push up the hill,
and you are the hill.
When I am exhausted you are still
running in me, my body knowing
how to run, bearing me along gamely.
You are the sprint at the end,
the push from within, the rush,
the release.
And you are my tiredness,
my gasping for air, for life, for God.
You are running and resting,
my feet and my finish line.

All day cells will adapt, bones resolve,
metabolism change, muscles renew.
What is “fitness,” but God happening?

Now I am done running.
I am reading poetry.
And God is in me…

Deep Blessings,

Pastor Steve

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