Unfolding Light

           “I am the way and the truth and the life.”
                       —John 14.6

Some people gather around a monument,
like a statue of a rock star they love,
or a president they would have voted for.
But it’s Jesus. They get points, I guess, for coming there.
They admire the statue, read about it from a little book,
some even kneel and pray, or toss a coin or something.
Then they go back to whatever they were doing.

If you look at it just right the statue seems to gesture,
as if to invite the viewer onto a path behind it.
Some people take the path. For them that’s Jesus.

But for me there’s no statue, not even
one pointing the way. Not even a path.
There’s just the one I walk with.
He is the path.
Whenever I make him into a statue he vanishes.
As soon as he becomes a laid-out path he leaves it.
But if I keep walking with him he stays with me.
It’s the walking-with.
The moment-by-moment choosing, serving,
being loved and loving,
harmonizing in a two-part jazz improvisation.

If I forget, if I somehow lose my way,
I can always go back to the statue and look. When I do
I hear singing, a sweet tune that needs a little harmony.
When I start down the old familiar path
I hear a voice behind me say. “Wait. Let’s go this way.”…

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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           “Do not let your hearts be troubled.
           Believe in God; believe also in me.”
                       —John 14.1

People have little glittery knick knacks and posters
that say “Believe”… often accompanied by unicorns.
Every Christmas the movies want you to “believe!”
In what? Santa Claus? Unicorns?
We’re ruining that word.
What Jesus means is to trust,
not just to think the spindly rope bridge will hold,
but to walk across it.

          +

Beloved, beyond opinions about you,
we entrust ourselves to your grace.
We trust your loving presence, and we follow.
Every day, though the bridge is sometimes shaky,
we are learning to trust you.


Breath prayer:
                           Trust . . . love

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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By the mystery of grace,
the imperishable power of love,
death rolls over in its grave,
sighs,
and lets go.

               •

No one could hold onto Jesus—
the soldiers at the tomb,
Mary in the garden,
the disciples at Emmaus.
Every time he slips through our fingers
and into our hearts.

                •

Resurrection is such a mystery;
it’s hard to grasp
letting go,
being held.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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When you are asleep
you hang in God’s closet.
Every morning God gets up
and stands there wondering,
“What shall I wear today?”
God chooses you and puts you on.
That’s when you wake up.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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          Beloved, you are my shepherd.
          You lead me in good paths
          for your name’s sake.
                       —Psalm 23.1, 3

Resurrection is not just comfort,
it’s courage. It’s a signpost.
It points to the victory
of love and nonviolence
over evil, death and injustice.
It indicates the good path
where our good shepherd leads us,
through the shadowed valley of suffering,
to bring to the table of grace
even our enemies.
For, dying, love endures.
Failing, love wins.
So we follow good paths
with courage to live gently,
to serve humbly, to forgive freely,
to risk boldly for the sake of the vulnerable.
Such is the path to life
that can’t be taken from us, even by death,
an abundantly fruiting tree,
rooted in the eternal heart of God.
So nourished in this peculiar green pasture
of dying and rising,
and so gently led
by our dying and rising shepherd,
with love and courage we go.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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You lean gently toward me,
stethoscope placed to hear
what I can’t hear.

Your rich silence
is itself a word.

Every time I speak
I interrupt your listening.

What is within,
hearing itself heard,
is changed.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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           The shepherd
           calls their own sheep by name
           and leads them out….
           The sheep follow the shepherd
           because they know that voice.
                       —John 10. 3, 4

There is no sound.
It’s not a word.
It’s the name rain has for earth,
the name a mother has
for the child inside her
before it is born.
It is the name you become,
the voice that speaks you into being,
spoken only as the tongue
speaks flavor to the mind,
as a spring speaks the river.
A name that is not spoken in love,
a voice that knows an algorithm
but not your soul,
you safely ignore.
You listen for the voice that knows you,
that wakens you into life;
and that voice you follow,
like roots for water,
like leaves to sun.
You follow
so that life, deep and flourishing,
is yours.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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In the mist rises something like a tree,
arms outstretched, as a yoke,
in its branches fruit, and blood,
planted by a stream all of life drinks from.
It’s missing an apple.
A lynching tree, maybe,
in midday sun,
where the birds of the air
make nests in its branches,
whose leaves are for
the healing of the nations.
A fruitless tree not cut down,
but dug around with manure.
Something like a serpent in it, lifted up,
a tree of good and evil,
a child climbing there,
the root of Jesse,
a woman beneath it, weeping.
Something like a vine
of which we are branches,
embracing everything,
the root and seed and leaf,
the cutting down of the tree
and the new tree all one thing,
a tree coming up in spring
out of a seed that has died,
out of stone, out of a grave,
blossoming in the dead of winter,
in the dead of all of us,
holding up the sky as night falls
and falls and falls.
Something like a tree,
on which is hung our salvation.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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       Then their eyes were opened,
       and they recognized him,
       and he vanished from their sight. — Luke 24.31

Searching among the ruins of your failures,
the gravestones marking your losses,
preserving your sins,
you will not find your Beloved.
Among the sad stories carved in stone
of what you should have been,
you will not find the Holy One.
Trying to understand, you won’t be able to grasp.
Even in your brightest moments,
as with a falling star,
the light cannot be held.
Your Redeemer is not entombed in the past.
but here, in this beating moment.
And then not.
Not waiting for you to notice,
the One Who Is With You
is no longer in that moment just past,
but has gone into the next.

How we have to keep awakening
and awakening.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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          You have delivered my soul from death,
                   my eyes from tears,
                   my feet from stumbling.
                       —Psalm 116. 8

There were actually three disciples
on the way to Emmaus, but one stopped off
at a nearby village to visit her sister
so she never met the risen Jesus.
Had to hear about it afterwards.

At a church picnic once I watched
as a softball, a long foul ball,
traced its fateful arc right toward
the head of a three-year old who never saw
her dad reach out and casually catch it.

Our granddaughter, two months old,
is cared for through all kinds of weather
and infections and sleepless nights,
and will likely never hear of it.

I have been saved so many times,
delivered from death or at least stumbling,
and of most of them I am unaware.
Even without full knowledge I am learning
gratitude and wonder.

Some days my soul is like a three-year old
at a picnic being greeted with inexplicable joy
as if the subject of an amazing story.

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