Month: November 2019

Beloved, I awake
in the glory of morning
and you lie beside me
still sleeping
and I see how beautiful your face is,
how lucky I am that you are with me,
and this becomes my only will:
to be here with you.

Prayer is the silence
after we’ve both said this
to each other.

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

November 15, 2019

You are the Silence that remains silent with me,
the Presence I cannot sense, the Embrace I cannot feel.

Like a tourist I want pictures, but there is Nothing there,
only you, abiding, evading my calls for sensation.

I confess my desire to feel alive rather than
simply being alive, being present, being yours.

I give myself over to be yours without knowing,
to be beheld without beholding, without needing more.

I am the night in which you move unseen,
I am the morning that has become light

without knowing how.

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

November 14, 2019

         Nation will rise against nation…
         there will be earthquakes… famines and plagues…
         dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.
         They will arrest you and persecute you….
         This will give you an opportunity to bear witness.
                  —from Luke 21.10-13

Amidst the chaos and evil of the world
you bring something different.
You are not tainted by the world’s fear and hatred.
You bear love to the world.
To nations in warlike frenzy
or to neighbors afraid
or to families upset and struggling
you bring peace.
You bring trust in God.
Their resentment and resistance
is your opportunity to love.
Their craziness is deadly.
Hold steadfast to love;
that’s how you stay alive.
“By your endurance you will gain true life.”

____________________
Weather Report

Signs and portents
on earth and in the heavens,
fire and smoke and great storms,
and unseasonable cold.
None of which changes
the low pressure zone that produces
the great calm within you.

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

November 13, 2019

I’m going to be a mess today.
Not by any effort, but simply because
I’m a mess.
I will be fragile today,
small and incomplete. 
I’ll be broken a bit, not completely,
but enough. Damaged.  Bent.
And you will love me.
I’m going to be no better
than the total failure I despise,
no more deserving than the worst of them.
And you will love me.
But then, I will be no less worthy
than the Virgin Mary
and you will love me.
Because your love has nothing to do with my deserving,
but your infinite goodness,
your infinite goodness,
your infinite goodness.

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

November 12, 2019

No parades today,
no patriotic tributes.
To honor those who have served,
care for the wounded,
the traumatized, the destitute.
Tend to the suicidal, the lonely, the tormented.

To honor those who serve,
clean up the hell we create for them.
Repent of your own violence of heart,
the warmongering of fear and competition
and demonizing strangers.
Resist urge to project our will across the world.
Be people of peace.

To honor those who serve,
tend to others, protect the weak,
sacrifice for the sake of the whole:
to honor those who serve,
serve.

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

November 11, 2019

My head full of another world,
I march through this one, unpresent.

This earth waits upon me.
These beings call out to me.

How can I come to them?
How can I not?
There is no other way than to slow down.

Let gratitude catch up to me.
Let humility overtake me.
Let wonder stop me in my tracks.

See what I see.
Hear what I hear.

This world opens itself into me.

Now I am ready to live this day.

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

November 8, 2019

The tree pulls
at the earth,
hauling it up
into the sky.
It never quite
arrives, but can’t
stay down either.

I may be
dirt, God, but
you keep on
tugging at me
and I don’t
mean to but
I keep flowing
joyfully without fail
upward and upward.

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

November 7, 2019

                 God is God not of the dead, but of the living.
                                   —Luke 20.38

You spent your childhood planning
your retirement home.
You blew your youth laying out
that shuffleboard in your head.
You missed the fishing trip,
obsessed instead with
how you would be congratulated
for how you cooked the fish.

Never mind heaven.
Living is not rewarded. It’s just worth it.
Whatever you wait for, it isn’t
something God is withholding.

God is not the God of later.
God is in the present moment.

Life is this, not something else.
Pay attention.

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

November 6, 2019

         “They are like angels and are children of God,
         being children of the resurrection.”
                  —Luke 20.36

Resurrection is not just the afterlife.
It’s the new life God gives us
when we hand our old one over to God.
It can happen any time.

The old life we hand over is limited
to the space inside our body.
But the new one is not so limited:
we are no longer separate individuals,
but rejoined with our wholeness;
no longer belonging to one
but belonging to all;
no longer strangers but siblings.

Giving our life to God
(over and over again)
we are angels who have died
and gone to heaven,
who inhabit the universe,
who love all as if married to all.

The life you hand over is small;
the life you receive is infinite:
“eternal,”—not infinitely long
(you don’t even like long meetings,
let alone living millions of years)
but infinitely deep and wide.
The infinite dimension of eternal life
is not time, it’s love.

Children of resurrection,
we let ourselves love and be loved
infinitely.
It starts now.

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

November 5, 2019

The smell outside a bakery.
The look we can’t see
but know in someone’s eyes
when they might like us.
The breath a singer takes
between the notes
by which we know
they’re one of us.
The silence of the owl.

The way you slip between
what I know and what I say.
The way you stand,
like winter behind autumn,
unseen behind the evident,
the space never anticipated
between
when I am absolutely certain
and what I know for sure,
consistently suspecting.
The peace at the calm heart
of my not knowing,
knowing there is more—

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

November 4, 2019