Daily Reflections and Worship Resources
Dawn enters
easily,
not shy,
just discreet,
then swelling,
light rising,
even on a cloudy morning
inevitable,
confident,
bearing an alreadiness
I covet.
She bends to me,
smiles,
whispers,
this rising is in you.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 0:46 — 1.1MB)
“Go and learn what this means,
‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’”
—Matthew 9.13 (quoting Hosea 6.6)
There are two religions in the world:
the religion of being right
and the religion of being loving.
They are incompatible.
Get it right and you may hurt someone.
Love, and you may break a rule.
We are always practicing one
or the other every moment,
always choosing.
This is Jesus’ faith in a nutshell:
not religious orthodoxy but loving behavior.
Not being right but being loving.
I know this, and believe it deeply.
Yet Jesus’ words stick:
“Go and learn.”
I’m not there yet.
I’m still right, and proud of it.
Still learning, still learning.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:20 — 1.8MB)
He saw a man named Matthew
sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him,
“Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.
—Matthew 9.9
Yes, you,
unsuspecting, unprepared, unqualified,
you are called.
The call is not about your powers or skills.
The call is to be the one you are created to be,
with all the gifts of the Spirit you’ll need to do that.
The call is to follow Jesus
in whatever unexpected way he turns up in your life,
to bring your weakness and your not knowing into his friendship,
to hand over your gifts without knowing how he may use them.
The call is to walk with him,
to hold the space while he does his miracles.
He needs you. Just keep him company.
Stay close enough to his light that you yourself are radiant.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:16 — 1.7MB)
In the woods, listen
beneath highway sounds
and planes overhead
to the gentle murmuring of the brook.
Sometimes it takes a while,
like letting your eyes get used to the dark,
to hear what else is there,
to the song of the brook
and the silence beneath the song.
Out of the woods it’s harder,
the noise more complicated, insistent, wordy.
But the song that created the world, and you,
still hums, threading through every moment.
It’s where your life makes harmony
with the universe. It’s your part.
Your greatest quest is not to go and find,
but to stop and listen.
Beneath everything
there is music
you were born to sing.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:17 — 1.8MB)
Growing old tutors us in what Jesus taught.
To let go, to let go.
To surrender things, control,
the power to make things as you wish.
To rely, and be grateful.
To know the blessing hidden in being
poor in spirit, with diminished powers,
trusting a greater power, unseen;
to be meek, unlikely to outgun the strong,
and know what you have;
to know mourning, and the comfort that outlives grief;
to hunger for a world
yet to come into its righteousness—
hunger that is strength.
And the blessing that endures. It endures.
To let pain be a teacher and weakness a coach
and failure a school that never lets out.
To leave your works for your heart.
To forgive yourself and others as one.
To renounce what anybody thinks of you.
To be able to see the long story of love,
how it has shadowed you.
To have found a center reliant on nothing
but the everlasting.
To know that your legacy shall be unknown;
that loveliness is not in your face but behind it;
that beyond the Mystery
all is gathered in capable arms;
that all is grace.
To know that when you have lost everything,
when there is nothing left of you
you are still you,
strong and beautiful, worthy and beloved.
And how to see that when others don’t.
To let go, and to let go.
And to trust that if you have loved
you have lived.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:39 — 3.6MB)
You probably won’t hear a healer by the lakeshore,
with the backup choir of seagulls singing,
gentle waves patting the boats you’re about to leave.
You probably won’t hear.
You’ll suspect.
More like falling in love,
only scarier and more freeing, an inward leaning out
toward something that feels more like coming home.
Despite the nets you leave behind,
a feeling it’s something you’re being given,
even as you yourself are given.
Like the tropical island the bird migrates to,
and the way to the island, only it’s not a place.
A way of being, a direction your life will flow.
A freedom you’re being led toward, step by step,
accompanied all the way, because
it’s not a call to a thing but a person, a friendship.
You go with someone who’s made the journey.
There will be missteps, falterings, wrong turns. All blessed.
There’s no voice, but a certain fullness in the silence.
You hear, and you go. Moment by moment, you go.
Something in you trusts:
the river knows the way.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:50 — 2.5MB)
See how they love each other.
How they include each other.
How they empty themselves into each other.
How they move together, dancing
(perichoresis, they call it, dancing around),
how they make space for each other.
They are not just a being, but being,
not merely existing but flowing,
like electricity—only love, all love.
See their delight in each other,
how none is whole without the others,
each surrendering to each other.
They are infinite, yet intimately present,
eternal, yet coming into being in this moment,
coming into being in you, as you let them.
Yes you, my lovely, are not merely a being
but a being-in-holy-being.
They want you.
They include you.
They are not complete without you.
You are the fourth member of the Holy Trinity.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:23 — 1.9MB)
How easy it is to worship our image of God
instead of God.
The Trinity is not a doctrine, it’s a koan.
It’s a way of slippery=izing our images of God:
God is This, the Opposite of this, and None of the above.
God is More Than One Thing. And The One Thing.
God is beyond our knowing or pinning down;
yet known, revealed, embodied.
The Intimate Beyond, the Infinite Companion,
and the Immediate Arising.
God is mostly mystery, and all love.
Your understanding is fog.
Your certainty is noise.
Your belief is irrelevant.
All there is is love.
Let the Loving Mystery confuse you,
the Unknowable know you,
the Unspeakable do the speaking.
God,
the Lover, the Beloved and the Love Flowing,
holds you.
Let it be so.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:37 — 2.2MB)
The Holy Trinity is not a doctrine
but a mystery, a koan,
the paradox of three persons in one,
a meditation on the names of God.
Meditate on the mystery.
Pray with the names. Let them speak.
Father, Son, Holy Spirit.
Mother, Child, Love Between.
Creator, Christ, Holy Breath.
Lover, Beloved, Love flowing between.
Source of all Being, Eternal Word, Living Spirit.
Abba God, Only Begotten, Spirit of Love.
Infinite Parent, Infinite Sibling, Infinite Self.
The One Beyond, the One Beside, the One Within.
Transcendent Mystery, Healing Presence, Emergent Energy.
Source of Love, Experience of Love, Energy of Love.
Holy One, Holy Many, Holy Us.
Lord of the Universe, Jesus of Nazareth, Heart of my Soul.
Loving Silence, Gentle Word, Abiding Love.
Mystery of Being, Gift of Love, Breath of Life.
Mother, Son, Holy Spirit.
Loving One, Loving One, Loving One.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 3:12 — 4.4MB)
Mother, Son and Holy Spirit,
beyond words we bless you,
you who defeat our words, confound
our images, encircle our understanding,
who are not a thing to be described
but Being, Love, Presence, to be met,
Lover and Beloved
and the love that flows between.
You are this, and the opposite of that,
and something else altogether;
Being itself, and source of all Being,
all giving and receiving;
mystery mostly, and all grace,
a little light and a hand on the shoulder.
Your Being enfolds all creation, nebulae,
one heart at a time, in your arms.
No mode of being, no heaven nor hell
nor hidden heart place, is beyond you.
All is within you. The entire created universe
is the smallest beloved embryo in your womb,
and yet you walk beside us, speak to us
each by name, breathe in us, cell by cell,
inviting us into your blessing,
your delight, your future, yourself.
You live in our tininess, share our unknowing,
suffer our pain, tremble in us.
Moment by moment you create all things,
die and rise, enliven and enloven us to holiness.
Eternal mystery, indwelling presence,
infinite grace, we cannot name or picture you,
but only worship you. We cannot divide you,
nor ourselves from you, but only Be.
Mother, Son and Holy Spirit, all praise!
We are present to you in love. Alleluia!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:20 — 3.2MB)