Month: September 2020

The Landowner replied, “Take what belongs to you and go;
I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you.
Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?
Or are you envious because I am generous?”
—Matthew 20.14-15

There is no such thing as deserving. None.
No one is owed anything.
One’s work, behavior, virtue or sin is irrelevant.
God loves each of us the same—infinitely—
according to God’s love, not our “deserving.”
God is free from our past:
God’s love isn’t determined by what we’ve done.
The devil wants you to fear
that God doesn’t really forgive, doesn’t just plain love,
but demands some kind of transaction,
some making up for something,
some reward or punishment, some quid pro quo.
This is how Satan gets us to eat the fruit of the Tree
of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Oh, how smart we are.

Jesus will have none of it.
He rips at our secure place in the caste system
(not up with the saints but higher than those people… ).
And he rips at our assuming to measure.
And our assuming (how handy for us!)
we are owed more than others.

Listen: Everybody gets God’s love, everybody the same.

Listen to your heart when I say that.
Everybody gets God’s love just the same. Everybody.
Even you know who.
What in you wants to say, “But….”?
Is that God’s voice.. or something else?
Why do you fight against the infinity of God’s love?
What is the fear, the hurt you hang onto?
What if you were to let go, and let God love?
What if there is no deserving, but only giving and receiving?
What if you are one of those who is given
way more than you earned?
Will you fuss… or just say thanks?

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

September 15, 2020

Hear our cry, O Holy One,
let our mourning rend your ears.
The fears for which there are no words,
the loss for which there are no tears:
the ashes of our hopes, our lives
say all we can, and no more.

The flames engulf the innocent,
the smoke of our burnt offerings rise,
offerings of our pride that makes others
our self-saving sacrifice.
Have mercy on us, and those who mourn.
Give us grace in our weakness.

O Holy One, have mercy,
and let our anguish rend your heart.
How long will you hold us to the heat
of our sin, yet make others pay?
The greed we’ve burned the world with,
the hate that scorches our kin?
Forests and prairies go up in smoke,
black bodies fall in blood,
we pass the plague among us,
our selfishness unmasked.
How long will you give us such freedom
to harm, to shoot, to demonize,
to split ourselves from each other
and from our very life?

O Gracious God, the smoke of mystery
clouds our eyes;
and yet we see you here,
moving among those who help,
who give themselves to calm the flames,
to heal the sick, to defend the poor.
You who brought us through the Red Sea,
bring us through again.
You who defended the lives of slaves
rise, and act, for so you always do.
May our hope be your worship;
may our justice be your praise.

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

September 14, 2020

Welcome those who are weak in faith,
but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions.
We do not live to ourselves.
—Romans 14.1, 7

Whenever I quarrel I am likely serving my own beliefs,
but not my neighbor. I’d rather be right than loving.

It is tempting to convince those in error they are wrong;
but it is more effective to simply be present to them in love,
even as I am disagreeing with them or confronting them.
Whatever grip they have on bad ideas will not be loosened
by my proving myself to be right, but by their experiencing
a better way. If it is not a way of love, I have lost.

I don’t have to agree. I can offer myself and my beliefs
with clarity, without either apology or malice,
but humbly, for I am not omniscient,
and yet steadfastly, because it is indeed my belief.

In the context of my respectful, compassionate care for them
and my full embodiment of my beliefs in love
they might come to see the wisdom of my views
that in itself overcomes the weakness of their own.
And they might not. But my calling is not to defend my beliefs;
it’s to love my neighbor. “We do not live to ourselves,”
nor to our faith. We live to love.

Unless we trust love even in the face of outright evil,
we don’t really believe in it, do we?

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

September 10, 2020

Flames have burned up the forests
burned up the towns
burned up the words

Air is unbreathable
sky is unseeable
ash is our food

Earth and neighborhoods
species and races
burned and looted

O Mysterious
walk through the fire
have mercy

How have we fed
the flames of hell?
with what torches? What engines?

In this climate
we who can breathe
must use it to question

New heaven and earth
flame of wisdom
light of revelation will come

But first the cloud of sorrow
ashes on our foreheads
ashes on our tongues

Remember you are dust
and to one another
you shall return

O Mysterious
be present
have mercy

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

Sept. 11, 2020

I stood by the sea and thought of you today.
For you, to whom I cannot now be near,
I stood near the ocean,
whose arms embrace the globe,
whose hands encircle even its deserts,
whose fingers reach through the river you drink from.
The wind-sent waves in vestments green and white
and bearing foam-fringed banners
processed up the aisle with song
and fell prostrate at my feet,
repeating their ancient prayer:
Go on.
The breath of God is at your back. Go on.
There will be sorrowful leavings, and sightless nights.
You may need to pause and weep or rage,
but then go on.
You will not fail. Life alone moves us,
and will see us to our shore, God-winded home.
You are breathed by God, whose flow will carry you.
You need not go before, nor will it serve to lag behind,
but let that great sea-brooding spirit bear you on
at its own holy pace; and you, surrendering
to its vast sea-spanning courage, and by its grace,
will go, like waves, and will go on—
always toward the one who stands
receiving you in wonder and in joy.
Go on.

________________
Weather Report
Windy,
gusting at times to courage-raising speeds,
as the Spirit’s flowing currents
move us from where we are,
despite our feeble wind resistance—
always, by grace, downwind.

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

September 8, 2020

             “If one sins against me how often should I forgive?
             As often as seven times?”
             Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times
                                        —Matthew 18.21-22

Because seventy-seven times
you have turned around and picked up
the resentment you had laid aside.

Because there are seventy-seven
layers in an onion.
Seventy-seven degrees of being free.

Because seventy-seven times
your assailant will smirk at you
or need reassurance.

Because the real work of forgiving
is not just forgiving once but staying forgiving,
like continuing to breathe.

Because only after seventy-seven times
do you begin to comprehend
how infinitely you are forgiven.

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

September 7, 2020

A weaver moves into your house.
She makes beautiful things
out of everything you own,
weaving every living thing together.
She unravels rugs and furniture.
The loss is great.
But they’re so beautiful.
They bring joy to everyone.
So you let her.
She unravels your house.
You hesitate, but choose to let her.
What she weaves is amazing,
and clothes the world in beauty.
You are truly happy.
She takes your hand
and begins
gently
carefully
unraveling—

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

September 4, 2020

They’re paving our street,
smoothing a layer over a crusty, cracked road
that covers some dirt and stones,
that cover a layer of bedrock that lays
over the mantle, that lays over the core of the earth.
Canyons prove the layers;
mountains disrupt them unpavably.
How complex is a human being,
the strata of memories, urges, fears and living things?
Archaeologists date their findings
by how deep down they are,
layers beneath layers.
A bump in the kitchen floor in an old house
marked where the linoleum was laid
over a nail head that wasn’t flattened
that still, from under, announced itself.
No doubt you’ve seen a seedling
crack the macadam.
Psychologists get paid by the hour
to uncover things that have gone deep:
in effect, they’re paid by the layer,
undoing all that pavement.

My thoughts are paved over
with asphalt words,
my feelings re-surfaced.
What you see has been steamrolled…
while deep beneath
something rumbles.

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

September 3, 2020

Owe no one anything,
except to love one another;
for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
—Romans 13.8

God,
help me this day to add love to the world.
Not fear, not anxiety
about what I owe or am owed, but love.

Help me know my freedom—
not to do what I please,
but to fulfill my call to love,

my only goal not that I prevail
but that others receive love.

In calm interactions,
or in moments of anxiety or conflict,
let me contribute love.

In silence or in confrontation,
in public endeavor or quiet prayer,
in heroic action or mundane chores,
let me add love to the world.

O God of Love,
let your love overflow:
fulfill your love in me.
Amen.

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

September 2, 2020

    The Israelites walked on dry ground through the sea.
—Exodus 14.29

Somehow, in your own way, you have been there.
Making bricks without straw. Under a whip.
Your fruit— the fruit of your hands,
or mind, or loins—threatened.
Bound to labor for nothing.
Trapped in a fruitlessness not of your choosing.

How have you been enslaved? Addicted? Trapped?

And then something set you free.
Somehow Grace disrupted that scenario.
A Glorious pillar of fire, a terrible plague of death,
the persistent plea of a Moses—
forcefully God breaks the habits that bind us.

How did grace defeat your Pharaoh?

Then comes the hard work, the dangerous crossing,
the opening of the deep, the choice to wade in.
How could you have made that escape without help?  

How have you been set free?
What journey have you had to make?
What walls of water on either side have made you nervous?
Even if it feels like wandering in the wilderness,
are you keeping on the journey?
How is it going?
What do you need?

Trust God wants you free. God is with you.
This is not just your journey;
it is God’s.
With the cloud at your shoulder,
and a heart full of thanks,
into that Mystery Red Sea
step with courage. Go on.

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

September 9, 2020