Unfolding Light

There are many who are not praying for peace—
people who are praying resentment and grievance,
violence and division, people praying fear and anger.

But that’s not the station my heart is tuned to.
I listen for the voice of healing.
I am attuned to the spirit of peace.

I open myself to the power of love, even toward the cruel.
I entrust myself to the mystery of grace.
I offer myself to the flow of mercy.

Amid cruelty I practice kindness.
In the face of lies I speak truth.
While others are shouting, I listen.

In chaos, I choose love.
In conflict, I choose love.
Even to the end, I will choose love.

I will not save the world,
but I will help the world;
I will be a force for good.

I may not change minds or sway an election,
but I will shine light.
And the darkness can not overcome it.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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We plead for God to intervene,
even “just this once…”
But I don’t think that’s how God works:
the Holocaust would have been a good time to do so.
No, God doesn’t stop the tyrant,
or nudge the car on the icy road.
God is not a Big Guy with a magic finger
he deploys now and then (but not always).

God is the Love at the heart of all being,
as constant as gravity, infinitely attentive,
and can’t be more present or active than right now.

When we ask for God’s help,
what we mean is to align ourselves
with the great power of God’s grace already at work.
Like musicians in perfect tune,
we create harmonics, notes that sound
though none of us is producing them.
Our harmony with God creates an energy field
that does indeed change things.

In troubled times it takes great concentration
to align ourselves with grace instead of force,
with love instead of fear.
We begin by allowing ourselves to be loved,
along with all the rest of Creation,
and then we fall into that love,
and let that love flow through us into the world.

I think that’s what we mean when we pray,
“Please, God…”

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Pray for the world.
Open your heart to the goodness of God,
pouring out upon the world.
Open your heart to the goodness of the world,
the dear people, the children and women and men,
the creatures, and all living things.
As you open your heart, in pours their pain.
Make space for their aching, their sadness, their terror,
for the wounds of war and poverty and greed,
the great shadow of loneliness.
As the pain flows in, make more room:
make room in your prayer for the grace of God,
the vast mercy of the Beloved,
the very atmosphere of love that fills and embraces all.
Let your prayer be the world flooded with blessing,
in all its wonder and pain and beauty and brokenness,
the world inundated with God’s hope and tenderness.
Hold that. Hold it a long time.
Then carry it out into the world, your living prayer.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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I’m in a hospital waiting room,
scattered with lonely, anxious people
and a sense that everything is impending,
and also stale magazines.
A woman sits next to me
who is God,
writing in a journal of some kind.

“Will you hold this for me please?”
as she blows her nose.
Her handwriting is loopy but not girly,
wandering but strong, like a river
through a meadow, or even a delta
branching out in a thousand streams.
Somehow I can read it.

So much suffering, so much yet to heal.
Will they make it?

Only because I hold the universe
and the hope it gives me
do I go on, trusting
it will be all right.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             “My teacher, let me see again.”
                         —Mark 10.51

Open the eyes of my heart
to see your grace in every moment,

to see with hope and gratitude,
with trust and humility.

Teach me to look with my mind as open
as my eyes; teach me in every gaze

to look and see as things really are,
not as I already think they are,

not as fear (mine or anyone’s) tells me to see,
but to see with grace as you see.

Let me see with the eyes of love.
Teacher, let me see anew.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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You are a steward of all you are and have,
your riches, your gifts, your abilities.
It matters what you do with them.
You are also a steward of your needs, your wounds.
You are a steward of your pain.
What will you do with it?
Many people are poor stewards of their pain:
they feel hurt or fear, and they don’t know what to do with it.
They turn it into anger, resentment, blame and violence.
They make others bear their pain.
Others have pain as well—even deeper pain,
the agony of abuse, or generations of oppression—
and they turn it into compassion.
They let it fuel their work for justice and healing.
Your pain is part of your story, part of who you are.
Steward your pain well.
Let Jesus help you carry it, and see where it goes.
Turn your suffering into love.
That’s what it means to take up your cross.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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You sit with your back against a birch tree.
The tree has come to a place of mind
to release its leaves, all of them.
You are hanging on to something.
Firefly larvae burrow underground,
carrying their light off into the darkness.
Frogs have given up their breath,
awfully complacent in the deepening mud.
They know what to keep, what to give away.
Clouds have laid themselves out on the ground,
all their belongings set to the curb, without grief.
Like the maples we flourish toward our graves.
Mother bears will lumber down into their dens,
wrap their arms around a death of sleep,
ready for birthing.
The ferns have put their copper coins
into the temple box, all they had.
The milkweed have opened their purses,
throwing their savings to the wind,
holding back nothing.
The geese and herons give up their place,
the grasses have taken account
and now reduce themselves to their roots.
A little feathered seed floats by.
Those fleeing Egypt, what did they take,
what did they leave? How did they know?
Mendicants with their begging bowls,
what have they left out of their little bags?
Leaning against the prodigal birch
you listen for what you might shed,
and what can’t be taken from you,
and what will be held for you for another time.
The brook, autumnal trickle,
small in its channel, gives itself to the sea,
awaiting snow.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             Then the Holy One answered Job out of the whirlwind:
             “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
             Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth?”
                         —Job 38.1, 4, 18

Job’s friends insist he must have done something
to deserve his suffering.
Job dissents… but finally breaks,
and asks God, “OK, I give up. Why do we suffer?”
God’s answer, mostly, is no answer:
You don’t know what you’re talking about;
you couldn’t comprehend what I might say.
Do you think you’d do better at running the world?
Yet notice that in showing Job how small he is,
God shows him (for three chapters!) how great Creation is.
Yes, you suffer, because you’re a fragile creature who cares.
(There is no “why.” Suffering happens.)
But look at the Whole: you’re not just a little suffering individual;
you’re part of a great, beautiful, wonderful world— a good world.
Let the whole thing, not just your little bit of it, be your reality.
When you suffer, think of the whole universe.
Yes, there is suffering in it, some of it yours;
yet, all in all, it’s good.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             The Human One came not to be served
             but to serve.
                         —Mark 10.45

The Chef, a great creator, cooks up your life,
a whole gorgeous person,
with all your gifts and faults,
your wounds and beauty,
skills and resources,
with the Chef’s distinct taste
in every savory bite,
and the Chef puts the steaming plate of your life
on the counter and says, “Order up!”
Now, do you take it off into the corner
and eat it all yourself,
or do you serve it, all of your life,
to the hungry world that awaits?


                Whoever wishes to be great among you
                must be your server.
                          —Mark 10.43

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             They said to him,
             “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left,
             in your glory.”
                         —Mark 10.37

Oh, James and John, you impudent, arrogant fools!
How blatant—your vanity, your selfishness!

Yep. And I confess, I’m right there with you.
I assume I belong in the inner circle,
in a privileged place, and feel wronged if I’m not.
Straight white Christian male—surely I’m in.
(Christian nationalism, white supremacy…
I’m not that far removed, am I?)

Placing myself at the center of the world,
I wound the world.
Seeking priority, I violate our oneness.

God, give me the heart to repent
of my self-centeredness, my entitlement.
Give me the humility to see you
in those I want to outclass.
Give me compassion to outweigh my ego.
Give me courage to trust your grace,
not my deserving.
Give me faith to know
the last and the least and the lost are loved,
and the wisdom to know myself among them.

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