Unfolding Light

              God has scattered the proud
                          in the imagination of their hearts.
              God has brought down the powerful from their thrones
                           and lifted up the lowly.
                                                     —Luke 1.51-52

Neither the toppling of the powerful
nor the lifting of the lowly
is complete without the other.

I need both. I confess
I want to bring down the powerful
and also to become one of them.

I want the scattered proud to be others,
to protect my privilege. When refugees
are settled, to keep my old world.

I’m not sure I’m ready for the lowly in me
to be lifted up, to be guided
by humility and powerlessness.

Oh, Mighty One,
do your work in me,
that I may do my work in this world.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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          Jesus began to speak about John:
          “What did you go out into the wilderness to look at?”
                       —Matthew 11.7


We don’t seek someone in soft robes,
a spokesperson from the royal ballroom.
We’re not just awaiting the happy morning
with presents and family and comfort food.
We await a Messiah who will be with us
in our loss and lay hands on our trauma,
and heal us and the evils of this world.
It will disturb—a thorough pruning,
axes at the roots of unfruitful trees,
winnowing and cleansing fire.
It will be a firm and gentle revolution
against the Empire of hate and greed:
the unwhole healed, the dead raised,
the poor receiving good news,
the desert blossoming.
God’s intent for us is serious.
So our Advent preparations are festive:
we deck halls, bake cookies, wrap gits.
But they are also sober and deeply attentive.
We hang lights, but also honor the darkness,
for it is in this darkness, this,
that the promise unfolds among us,
this darkness in which God comes
to be with us in our anguish.
We let our eyes adjust, to see in the dark.
When we see clearly what we see,
the world indeed begins to change.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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          You have looked with favor
          on the lowly state of your servant.
                       —Luke 1.48

O Mary the Disregarded,
passed over, totally missed,
daughter of the world’s denials and refusals,
its doors closed and condescending sighs;
Miriam of the slums,
whose voice has not been heard;
Miryam of Nobodies,
written off for being a woman,
Sister of No Account,
you who have so long and so habitually
apologized for yourself—
hark.
         The Divine sees you,
and sees in you
the Divine.
Disdaining the judgments of men,
the Beloved regards you with favor.
To God your lowly state is no such thing.
Great things will be accomplished,
the strong arm of God revealed,
in you.
Your very soul magnifies the Mighty One,
and discloses God’s mercy, promised from of old.

Rejoice in God, your redeemer.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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          John sent word and said to him,
           “Are you the one who is to come,
          or are we to wait for another?”
                       —Matthew 11.2-3

So many signs,
so many people raise our hopes,
and then fade in history’s crowd and clutter.
Will this be the Christmas when—…?

But we do not await some traveler from a far shore,
some miracle for a while withheld, then granted.
We await the blossoming of what is already within,
“as a farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth.”

The One we await is the Beloved, present here,
the spirit of love, embodied already.
Many may bear that spirit, but it is also within you.
Turn to love, and the One you await will appear.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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            The wolf shall live with the lamb;
                    the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
            the calf and the lion will feed together,
                     and a little child shall lead them.
                                —Isaiah 11.6

God, I am home to both lamb and wolf,
both love and anger, fear and desire,
both lashing out and running away.
I fear the world’s anger
yet adopt it as my own.
I am torn between the anxious prowl
and your gentle peace within me.

I accept them both,
so that I may freely choose.

Help me to trust your grace,
and dare to dwell with the wolf,
knowing that even in the face of evil and injustice
I may have peace,
that even amid uncertainty I may have hope,
that even now I may know joy.

Child of God, lead me.

            May the God of hope
            fill you with all joy and peace
            in trusting God’s grace,
            so that by the power of God’s Spirit in you
            you may abound in hope.
                         — Romans 15.13

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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          John said to them,
          “You brood of vipers!
          Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?”
                       —Matthew 3.7

The “coming wrath” is not God’s vengeful anger,
but the doom of the world’s self-sentenced ways,
the inevitable collapse of all greed and violence
into pointlessness and the abolition of being.
Those who came to John to judge were trapped
in their own grace-starved world. Fighting
for their place, they would destroy each other,
drowning in their own anger, fear and selfishness.

The Coming One invites us into a different world,
where God’s wrath is not vengeful anger
but refining fire, the blacksmith’s hot anvil,
God’s insistence on transformation,
where our swords are hammered into plowshares,
fear bent into courage, greed worked into trust.
It may feel like wrath, to be so wrought
for the sake of love—even by grace,
but there is no anger, only mercy
and the hard, painful labor of birthing us
into a new realm.

The blacksmith, pleased with the work,
plunges it into the deep baptismal water,
and it comes out tempered, strong, and ready.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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           The axe is lying at the root of the trees…
           The one who comes after me
           has their winnowing fork in their hand,
           and they will clear the threshing floor
           and will gather their wheat into the granary,
           but burn the chaff with unquenchable fire.
                       —Matthew 3.12

O my Redeemer,
I can’t rid myself of these sins,
my wayward wants and hates and fears,
my killing habits, my unloving ways,
these growths that strangle me.
With all your merciful strength
take up your axe of grace,
and prune the branches of my heart.

Bring, muscled, to my gathered being
your winnowing fork.
Thresh the grain of my life.
Save all that is good and all that is blessed.
And all that is deadly, all that robs,
all that weighs without fruit, carry off and burn
in the mercy of your unquenchable fire.

By your welcome grace take from me
what I haven’t the power to do away with.
Relieve me of what I, enthralled, still cling to.
Come, liberating axe, dear winnowing fork,
have at me, and set me free.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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          Repent,
          for the realm of heaven has come near.
                       —Matthew 3.2

To repent is no arduous labor,
no pious accomplishment,
but simply to let go.

Let go of resentments,
the conviction that it won’t work,
my will to do it my way….

Let go of having to please this world,
to appease the Emperor,
to go along….

Let go of the lie
that I won’t be happy unless…
and dare instead to trust it can be given.

Let go like a sleeping child
and know I am loved, carried,
borne somewhere new.

I am given
(and the whole world with me)
the grace to begin anew.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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          The night is far gone; the day is near.
          Let us then throw off the works of darkness
          and put on the armor of light.
                                —Romans 13.12

Oh, we still dwell in night;
the day we long for, aching, we don’t yet see.
Advent comes unseasonably among us,
a rose in winter, too soon blooming,
yet opening still, a dawning even in the night,
a light not seen but known, relied upon.
O Light of Hope, not merely dreaming
of some better time, but trusting, now, the Mystery,
not mastered or deserved but purely given,
grant us that light, and let us shine
with the warmth and brightness
of your love for us.
Your light will be our armor in these jagged times.
It won’t defend us from life’s pain,
but from the darkness trying to seep in,
the death of care that is our deepest night.
Our trust in grace will shine and light our way,
and so, among a billion hoping hearts,
your Christ will come, and find a manger here,
and even in the midnight world’s deep gloom
a dawn will rise.

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