Unfolding Light

          He was lifted up,
          and a cloud took him out of their sight.
                                 —Acts 1.9

As we walk out of the city
(why are we leaving?)
the day feels fresh and open,
green blades springing up
(the sower knows not how),
songs of birds we hear but can’t see.
Thomas stops to blow
dandelion seeds into the breeze.
To our questions, the rabbi frames
his answers in more silence than usual.
The wind wraps its soft baby arms
around our necks, whispering.
We walk on grass;
behind us it springs back up.

Then words not of departure
but of sending. Dispersal.
Then he isn’t there.

Stunned, silent emptiness.
(The wondergrief. The traumajoy.
The un-knowing.)
Our cherished certainties
float away on the wind.
A space between us so real,
it seems full of something.

No one speaks.
On the way back
it does not surprise me
when Thomas, without asking,
reaches out,
takes my hand.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Emerging from woods, between the oaks
and the reeds, I stop. A great blue heron
stalks her lunch at the edge of the pond.
I want with a hunger too like hers,
to come close, an intimate observer,
admitted to gaze upon her mystery,
her godly form, her elegant movements,
to absorb her aura of far lands and vast heavens,
to enter her peace, and that other world in her eyes.
That world closes up inside this one.
I know she sees me and is already choosing
to trust or to fly. I want to be trusted.
I know she will fly.
I step back into the woods, and circle around.
Sometimes faith means even letting go of faith.
On the far side of the pond I look back.
She gleams white and grey in the morning light.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Doctor, something’s wrong with me.
I have a pain here, I think it’s my heart,
does it look sore to you,
this hope I have for the future?
My rib cage, people in cages, it hurts.
My eyes ache, seeing masked men
whisking children away. Do I need drops?
Doc, it hurts when I lie. Is that normal?
I’ve eaten fine, but I’m still hungry,
this nagging hunger, this little
child in Gaza. Can I take something for that?
There’s a ringing in my ears, a voice
at a microphone making up hateful slurs.
I think I have an infection, something
in my blood, hate and fear and dread.
Something like cement, or iron bars in my chest,
parts of me disappeared to a foreign country.
I mean, nobody’s died, so why this grief?
I ache from being tackled and thrown, well,
not me but the woman in the video, but I feel it.
This slate-heavy emptiness trembling in my gut—
what is that? There’s a fever in my planet.
Doc, I can’t breathe, and I’m dizzy, like vertigo,
standing on the edge of a cliff, falling
into some darkness generations long.
Is there a cure?

             Yes, with you,
             and within you all.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light www.unfoldinglight.net
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          I am in my Abba,
          and you in me, and I in you.
                       —John 14. 20

God is infinite;
there is nothing outside of God.
The entire universe is in God.
We are inside God.
Christ, the embodiment of God’s love,
is everywhere, suffuses everything,
and we exist within that love,
members of the body of God’s grace.
That embodied love lives in us,
breathes in us, loves in us.
Everything you do is an act of God
if you let it.

Breath prayer:
                         You in me . . . I in you

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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A child, I stood by a still lake
at night and gazed as the water
mirrored the sky, the stars spread
over the night and down into the lake,
and, I imagined, into me,
and like the lake my receiving their light
stretched up into the night and
I extended to the end of the universe
and for a moment I was infinite.
As I grew up I learned that the stars I saw
may have died eons ago,
having gone on happily without me,
and how foolish I was.
Now that I am old I see
I’ve never known anything truer.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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          If you love me,
          you will keep my commandments.
                       —John 14.15

God of love,
I want to keep your commandments,
not to be right, or to be rewarded,
but only because I love you,
as I honor marriage vows
not because I must
but because I love my spouse.
Help me keep your commandments
by forgetting your commandments
and remembering your love.
Let my love flourish
and my obedience blossom from it.
And when my love falters,
grant me the gift of obedience,
that it might reawaken my love.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Let me be like this tree,
open faced to the gallery of sky,
to the many-fingered wind,
to the creatures who take advantage of it.
Its roots deepen their belonging in the dark mystery,
persevering, insistent without insisting.

Let me be like this river,
receiving and letting go,
flowing with all it’s given,
happily generous.

Let me be like this rock,
mountain-born, glacier-borne,
that one day will be sea sand,
but now stands, solid,
a thing of simple beauty.
Let my joy and my calling be that.

Let me be like this day,
open and ready
for what is next.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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There’s a great listening going on.
If you listen you can hear it.
Animals hear things we can’t, or won’t.
The trees guard their silence
to hear the soil, hear the wind,
hear every word, especially the unspoken.
When you’re buried earth listens so carefully to you,
to the soft tissues, and everything else.
Orbiting planets aren’t just caught in math,
they’re listening, sun and earth hearing and responding.
The universe holds its ear to your heart.
And there is a great listening among us, us jabbery people,
to the tales and the songs and the cries and the lies.
The sounds settle down in us
where only our bones can hear, but they do.
Beneath the roar and rattle you can hear this porous world
taking it all in, in the desert, yes, the ocean depths,
and even in the city, even in the deaf.
We can stop our ears with earbuds of noise,
or dismiss the jangle, open ourselves,
and join the great listening.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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The rain that rained last night is past,
though it’s not gone, but hidden here beneath us,
purling, pooling down below our feet,
seeping into every green, patient thing.
The peepers now are singing, each to each.
The beeches, young and old, do not beseech
but simply reach for light. They’re always right.
The morning light lies calmly on the limbs.
It’s in no hurry. It is resting.
The leaves nod calmly and receive.
The brook will never doubt the spring,
but opens up its throat and sings.
I would stay longer here, in heaven’s little taste,
but it’s no waste to take this blessing with me,
and know it in the streets and living rooms and offices,
and learn this trust: that everything is given, all is graced.
The ants are working hard and yet, by mercy
that’s not theirs they find their food; the wren
among the grit and sand and bits of trash we drop
is given seeds, takes wing, and pausing, gladly sings.


_________________
Weather Report

Joy,
borne on winds beyond our control,
falling like rain
throughout the night
before we were aware.
Chance of flooded hearts.

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