Month: April 2021

Alleluia!
The Resurrected One
was crucified,
but sure enough—he stayed resurrected!
He has risen from the dead.
This is the first day of Creation.
Alleluia!

Dearly beloved,
may the risen Christ light your way.
May the Seed that has died and borne fruit
raise you to new life.
May the love of God that cannot be vanquished
give you beauty and compassion.
May the life that cannot be taken from you
give you courage and joy.
May the mystery of Easter
bless you, guide you
and strengthen you, now and always.

Alleluia!

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

April 4, 2021

         He poured out himself to death.
                   —Isaiah 53.12

Before the rising green
the dark soil.
Still and black,
worked soil, fertile ground,
rife with loss and labor,
ground that’s wept and groaned,
and bled and given up.
Only love that’s given all,
and lost and lain in death
for long
may rise.

(O Mystery, that you, Beloved,
would deny yourself,
deny yourself,
and pour yourself out to death!)

In blackest dark,
in bleakest death,
the seed is planted.

And silent, waits. 

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

April 3, 2021

         He was despised and rejected by others;
                  a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity.
         Surely he has borne our infirmities
                  and carried our diseases.
                                     —Isaiah 53.3-4

In the bull’s eye of our injustice,
the bleeding wound of our violence,
you bear it.
At the heart of our horror,
the seat of our rage,
in the dark hole of our loneliness,
you bear it all.
In our isolation, our throatless silence,
our pandemic wail, our shamed cry,
our murderous righteousness,
Beloved, you bear it.
Despised, you love us.

                  How can we but die,

                                    and wait to be raised?

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

April 2, 2021

Mary,
your son taken from you
hung here to die
by the world you gave him to,

you remember that first startling
opening of your eyes,
the angelic visitation,
“of his Realm there will be no end…”

You know in the fist of this cruelty
the depth of what it means
to have given him fully,
a new kind of birth pang

shared by the world’s peasant mothers
who see their sons taken,
their cries muffled,
their agony belittled.

To those who take his life
he gives even more,
this dying a birthing, a nursing,
his flesh for their life.

With grief and generosity mothers know
(your son understood;
but the Empire can’t):
mothers, like God, give life.

It is given, not taken,
wholly given to the world
knowing the world will take unknowingly,
given nonetheless in love.

For the death of cruelty, you suffer;
the birth of justice a labor you accept,
a dying you transfigure, for the sake
of the realm of love that has no end.

Mary—O God—
sorrowing, you know
the life you gave
gives life.

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

April 1, 2021