Month: October 2023

           The tenants said, “This is the heir;
           come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.”
                         —Matthew 21.38


Jesus tells a story about wicked tenants
who want to take over a vineyard.
A vineyard would have been repossessed land
taken from farmers, turned to an export crop,
where they are now sharecroppers.
The story is a commentary on economic systems
that use people.
And also a hit at leaders
who are doing a lousy job.

But what if it’s also about us,
about our urge to take over religion
and make it ours?

God, I confess
sometimes I want to possess your vineyard,
to make my religion work out for me,
not merely to receive it but to control it,
to manage your grace,
to center it on me.
I repent of my mutiny.

I will let this be yours,
and I will work your fields.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:

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            The reason I speak to them in parables is that
            ‘seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen,
             nor do they understand.’
                      —Matthew 13.13


I rest the Bible in my lap.
Pick it up again, read again,
set the Bible down.
A moment. Then
I stumble through the parable
one more time.
Nothing comes.
This is not bad,
maybe even as it should be.

I go out into the woods.
I sit on an old stump and say,
“But what does this mean?”
and laugh at myself.
I sit longer, listening,
and then listening,
till at least I hear the air,
and something inside something
speaks silently to something
inside me.

Is it any different when I listen
to a neighbor?

I am learning to repent of my certainty,
to simply be mindful
that I don’t know,
to keep listening for what I haven’t heard.
To receive what is offered
without compulsion to master it,
to grasp, to understand.
Just listen and wonder.
Let the silences speak to each other.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:50 — 2.5MB)

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