Month: October 2019

The reason you ache
is the Beloved has to drag you
kicking and screaming into heaven,
while you keep your death grip on the sharp rocks.
The reason you feel empty
is you’ve spent yourself on excuses.
The reason you’re tired is it’s hard work
to run away.

Aw, forget it.
Just give in
and let the Beloved
pick you right up
and carry you off like a prize,
like a sleeping child.

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

October 17, 2019

         “Though I have no fear of God
         and no respect for anyone,
         yet because this widow keeps bothering me,
         I will grant her justice.”
                                    —Luke 18.4-5

The judge never does change his mind.
He will never be her advocate.
He’s just trying to get off easy.

My sin is like that judge.
I may be forgiven, my guilt washed away,
but my sin isn’t going to change.

My ego is still in office.
My self-centeredness hasn’t given up.
My racism hasn’t ben unseated.

Imagine the widow is a black woman
pleading that her children not be shot.
She’ll have to ask more than once.

God has to hammer away at my racism,
over and over, and wear me down,
daily remind me of my sin.

It doesn’t go away. My inner judge is corrupt.
Only when I know that do I listen
to a voice that knows better than I what to do.

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

October 16, 2019

         The judge said to himself,
         “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone,
         yet because this widow keeps bothering me,
         I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out
         by continually coming.”
                  —Luke 18.4-5

Our gender and power stereotypes told us to assume
the judge is God, which would make us the poor widow.
But wait. Who judges? Who cares neither for God or people?
That would be us. And who continually demands
that we do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God?

Sorry, we don’t get the high ground here, denying our privilege,
pretending we’re faithfully imploring God
with our persistent quest for justice.
We’re the ones deaf to the cries of the poor.

God comes in the voice of the vulnerable, the easily ignored,
while we in our arrogance easily ignore.

How disconcerting that in this story
the ball is in our court, not God’s!
The demand has been made, over and over.

Jesus warns us: God can outlast us.
But when God comes, will God find us listening?

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

October 15, 2019

Wuneekeesuq!

We’ve called this “Columbus Day.”
But it turns out he was a savage man,
racist, violent, selfish and abusive.
The land he “discovered” was somebody else’s,
but he took it anyway,
along with a few hundred lives,
and few hundred slaves.

So what do we do when our hero
turns out to be the bad guy,
the one who personifies our sin?

We name it. We confess our mistake.
We repent. We turn toward reparation.

Today I invite you to honor Indigenous People’s Day.
One simple thing you can do:
Learn where you live.
Look up the name of the people who lived where you are
before the Europeans came.
Learn how to say hello in their language.
(Yes, you in Canada and South Africa and Australia and New Zealand, you too.)

I live in the land of the Wampanoag people.
Their greeting is “Wuneekeesuq.”

It’s a tiny thing.
But it’s a step,
a step toward honoring the right people.

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

October 14, 2019

         One of them, when he saw that he was healed,
         turned back, praising God with a loud voice.
         He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him.
         And he was a Samaritan.
                  —Luke 17.15-16

The Samaritan, the foreigner, the outsider.
Not accustomed to being treated well.
Not burdened with a sense of entitlement.

How often I expect life to go well because,
well, because I’m a good person and I deserve it.
How we privileged folks take our blessings for granted.

What if I were to shed that arrogance, lay down
the burden of expecting everything to be fine,
and greet every grace with wonder and amazement?

I’d spend my life at the feet of Jesus. I’d burst
into flames, a burnt offering of thanksgiving.
I’d be glad. Always. Every breath I’d start again.

Every moment would become miraculous.
I’d become impervious to heartache.
I’d spend my life dancing.

What am I waiting for?

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

October 11, 2019

I don’t see you or feel you.
I know you coming out of things to me,
a breathing out into me,
a light pouring out of pure darkness
into me, full of the mystery of that dark,
full of this light, invisible darkness.
The urge in me that makes me breathe
I can’t find, but always comes, always.
You are the point on the horizon, the faint star
I see not by looking at but slightly away,
or even in the opposite direction,
where you smile like a knowing beggar,
where you reach out just before I suspect you
like a friend, with the perfect surprise,
like, in a foreign, unsure, impossible place
someone covering my eyes from behind and saying
“Guess who,” and I hear the unmistakable voice
of my lover.

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

October 10, 2019

         And as they went, they were made clean.
                  —Luke 17.14

Jesus sends lepers to the priest
to show him they are healed—
before they are healed!
It’s only as they go they are made well.

Jesus seems pretty confident.
They must be, too, or they wouldn’t be going.

Take for yourself this confidence:
that God wishes you well,
and that it shall be so.

What afflicts you now
will not determine you.
Already your blessing is decreed.
Go and show yourself.

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

October 9, 2019

         Ten lepers approached him.
         Keeping their distance they called out,
         “Jesus, have mercy on us!”
         When he saw them, he said to them,
         “Go and show yourselves to the priests.”
         And as they went, they were made clean.
                  —Luke 17.12-14

Leprosy meant uncleanness… impurity…
some distance from God… and from others.
If one were cured of leprosy
one had to be pronounced clean by a priest.

Call to mind all your impurities, your flaws,
your failings public and secret,
what distances you from God, from others,
from your true self, what’s disgusting about you.

Show yourself to God. You are made clean,
pure, whole, acceptable, good. You’re fine.
Imagine all shame, guilt and sorrow gone.
Evaporated. You’re perfectly fine.

Humility and gratitude dance hand in hand.
Judgment has no footing. Only wonder.
Tenderness toward others flows naturally.
Once you know everyone’s secret we all look different.

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

October 8, 2019

The leaves fall and fall,
and then the colors wander off,
and then comes November’s cold, its grayness,
all reduced to shades of gray, then winter.
First there is some loss, and then there is some loss.
The birches and maples and beeches
stand silently without birds, without regret.
They are not counting. They are not trying.

Once you have let go of all you are fond of
you are empty enough to listen
for a presence only absence can reveal.

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

October 7, 2019

Well, we’re all looking, aren’t we, for something?
Sweeping the house with every broom of indulgence,
every whisk of duty, poking under every chair leg
with the roaring vacuum of desire. Finding nothing yet.

Or studiously avoiding what we’re seeking, desperately
averting our eyes, staring at a piece of trash glinting…
How silly, or sad, the way we trade our hungers for ones
we’re more comfortable complaining about.

No one told us, or did they?, that the sweeping sound
is music of the greatest genius, but only if we go slow
and listen to it, the tune of our longing without finding,
because what you would find is always what you don’t have,

and what you most need you already have. It’s here,
and never left the house of your heart, given to you
like your skeleton, your gravity. Your whole life, precious
one, is the sound of God sweeping the world for you.

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

October 4, 2019