Unfolding Light

          You are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit,
          since the Spirit of God dwells in you.
                       —Romans 8.9

Flesh and spirit are not two separate things;
they are both good; they are both physically real.
God’s Spirit dwells in your good flesh.
Paul is speaking of two ways of seeing yourself:
as contained in and limited to your flesh;
or as one with all living beings,
a cell in the Body of Christ,
all made alive by one Spirit.
If you think you are an astronaut in your little suit,
floating alone in space, well, good luck with that.
You’re doomed by your finitude and mortality.
(This will make you afraid, resentful and selfish.)
In reality “you” are not just you alone,
but you-all, all of us, all of life,
given life that is not bound by your flesh,
but is infinite, and glorious, and shared.
We continually slip back into the illusion of our separateness.
Repentance is the moment-by-moment work
of re-membering, returning to our true selves
as members of the Body, in its power and unity
and mysterious unkillableness.
Your flesh is the creek God flows through.
From this spring flows humility, courage, and compassion.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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          God said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?”
          I answered, “O God, you know.”
          Then God said to me, “Prophesy to these bones…”
                                         —Ezekiel 37.3-4

Your calling is not to know
but to proclaim, to give hope to the bones.

You are the answer to your own longing:
the power within you to live as a sign.

You do not know the outcome, only that
you have been given as a symbol of hope.

Hope is not wishing for a preferred future
but acting on your trust in the face of the mystery.

You are an icon of a grace
you yourself do not understand.

This is not for your sake, but for the bones
that need to hear. Prophesy.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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          “Lazarus, come out!”
                    —John 11.43

Something in you has died.
It happens all the time.
Something you clung to,
something beloved.
Maybe a hope, a memory, a gift,
a time, a power, a blessing….

It is no longer.
Jesus didn’t save it.
It’s really gone.
It stinks.

Too late for miracles,
you let it go.
You grieve the loss.

Then
somehow—
only after those tears,
that absence,
that hopelessness—
a voice calls,
“Come out!”

And out of that death,
that loss,
that emptiness,
a mystery comes,
alive.

Even now, then, attend:
what is being called?

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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               After having heard that Lazarus was ill,
               he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.
                                     —John 11.6

Maybe he knew he couldn’t keep his friend safe,
or protect even his loved ones from the reality of death.
Maybe he stayed to remind himself.

Sure enough, when he arrived, both sisters cried,
“If you’d been here Lazarus wouldn’t have died.”
But he would have. We all do.

Oh, how we want God to quell the germ,
deflect the bullet, guide the tires.
Life, a marble rolling safely down a track.

Instead, we pray that we be open
to the intimate presence of the Beloved
even in our trials and suffering.

Maybe the grace of God
is not a shield that protects us from all harm
but an energy that changes everything.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Dusk unfurls. Light, exiled, walks off over the hill.
Thick clouds loom, ruin’s rumors.
A violent wind kicks up, trees shaken.

Against the black and violet sky
a small yellow flower stands,
strong roots and fragile petals.

The wise endure by the toughness of love,
familiar with both horror and kindness,
bearing sorrow and hope together.

The flower’s yellow comes from deep
in yellowness, tender enough for bees,
yet enduring in harsh winds.

Wisdom, neither cynic not optimist, dares
to see the darkness clearly, and the light,
and even before the dawn, to shine.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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          You lead me in right paths
                  for your name’s sake.
         Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
                I fear no evil,
                for you are with me.
                                —Psalm 23.3-4

Ever notice how the paths of righteousness
lead straight to the valley of death?

Between the green pastures and the table in a safe place
are dangerous passages.

The shepherd never leads us
into a dead end box canyon,

but often through nasty gulches
of threat, of loneliness, of loss,

and the shadows—my, the shadows,
the unknown, the fear.

But, to follow the shepherd of justice
on the path of healing, we go there.

We trust the pastures, the table, even the path,
because we trust the shepherd.

Strangely, so lovingly accompanied, we find
even the path itself is home enough.

So we go boldly.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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          He said, “He opened the eyes of a man born blind.”
          They responded,
          “You were born entirely in sins,
          and are you trying to teach us?”
          And they drove him out.
                       —John 9.32, 34

There are things you know, deep down,
powerful truths you may or may not have words for,
but you know they are true.
They may only be questions you have,
but you have them. You know.
Those truths, even the questions,
will threaten some people.
Even the possibilities threaten
systems and power structures they rely on.
They will try to convince you
you don’t know, you haven’t seen,
you haven’t experienced, you can’t question.
But you can, and you do.

Whenever you are thrown out,
you land in the lap of Jesus.
He is not afraid of the possibilities,
nor of others who are afraid.
He creates a fortress of truth,
where what you know is honored.
He gives you quiet time and space
to attend to what is deep within,
to discern with an open heart,
to trust your deep inner knowing,
even your deep, quiet questioning.
Even when you question what you think you know,
you do so under his loving gaze, through his eyes,
not the anxious eyes of the doubters.

Wherever you are in this cynical world,
you are also in the fortress of truth
that cannot be breached.
Trust what you know. There is power there.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Sitting through a chemo drip,
you wonder.
With the news,
the marriage, the child, the job,
even just this ordinary day,
you wonder.
Where is this going? 


Cities have maps, but not so with friendships,
or prayer, or aging, or the world
There are no signs, few landmarks;
even the goal might be vague.
Nevertheless we go,
under a different kind of guidance.
We do not know what something within us—
within us being among us—
knows.


But it knows.


The poet begins, and only gradually
does the poem reveal what it wants to say.

The tree reaches down its roots, blind.
The stormy petrel takes off for shores unseen.
Under the frozen river,
the water knows the way.






__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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          “If you were blind, you would not have sin.
          But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.”
                       —John 9.41

In the ninth chapter of his gospel
John tells a hilarious story
full of slapstick comedy
and subtle and not-so-subtle irony—
a sort of Jesus and the Three Stooges—
that on Sunday thousands of preachers
will read with a perfectly straight face.
In the story people whose eyes work fine
ask a man who was blind
to describe what he saw.
He sees clearly, though they do not.
They contort themselves
and trip all over themselves
with comic awkwardness
to avoid seeing what they see.
Despite the storyteller’s straight face,
intoning this tale as if it’s
a recipe for fish stew,
we’re supposed to laugh out loud,
first at those goofy Pharisees
and then even more seriously
at ourselves, since the real joke is on us,
because we too keep putting bags on our heads
and stumbling over God’s grace,
avoiding seeing what we see.
We don’t want to see grace
where we don’t want to see it.
We don’t want to see God
in people we judge.
‘Till we open the eyes of our hearts
the angels will just keep laughing at us.
But Jesus will sit down on the curb
with those who have been rejected
for seeing what they see,
and day after day work with us
to open our eyes.


_________________
Click here a script for a four-scene dramatic reading of John 9.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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          God said to Moses,
          “I will be standing there in front of you
          on the rock at Horeb.
          Strike the rock, and water will come out of it,
          so that the people may drink.”
                       —Exodus 17.6

Unexpected refreshment
flows from an act of service,
a mystery hidden
in an ordinary deed.
Acting in trust
for the sake of life and healing
releases the infinite grace
already present
in even the most unpromising situation.
Faith is not knowing,
but striking the rock.

_________________
Weather Report

Blessing,
impossible to forecast.
Clear, empty skies
may offer renewing rain.
Chance of precipitation 100%,
though unlikely.
Strike the rock.

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