Month: August 2024

             Put on the whole armor of God…
                         —Ephesians 6.11

The armor of God is distinctly not-armor:
a renunciation of might,
of power and force,
a radical commitment to non-violence.
It’s gentleness instead of fighting,
service rather than superiority,
listening instead of yelling,
love instead of self-protection.

You don’t just renounce guns.
You renounce bullying,
aggression, making fun of others.
You set aside the shield of cynicism,
the helmet of acceptability,
the sword of being right.
For the sake of healing
you accept vulnerability, embrace risk,
and stand with those who hurt.

To put on the armor of God
is not for the faint-hearted.
It’s to trust that love
and utter dependence on the grace of God
will keep you whole.
For it will.
It will.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             Jesus asked the twelve,
             “Do you also wish to go away?”
             Simon Peter answered him,
             “Boss, where else could we turn?
             You have the words of eternal life.”
                         —John 6.67-68

Among all the teachers of wisdom, and there are many,
what I listen for is the truth that connects me
with the heart of all things,
the Love at the center of the universe,
the words beyond words
full of life that is infinite,
that are the Word that speaks everything into being,
the Life that was before all, is in all,
and will outlive all.

For that, Jesus is my man.
Nobody else quite has the depth of it,
the joy and sorrow and healing and generosity
and suffering and courage and mystery and forgiveness
and through it all this gobsmacking trust
in the grace that never fails.
He’s the one who hands me the heart of God
and says, “Here, it’s yours.”

His is the love that can heal my soul,
charge my heart, and raise me from the dead.
There’s nobody else I’m drawn to listen to
so much, so deeply, so needy, so happy.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             Because of this many of his disciples
             turned back and no longer went about with him.
             So Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?”
                         —John 6.66-67

I love this little glimpse of Jesus,
for the moment not testing the disciples,
not handing out difficult teachings,
but wanting friends, hoping not to be alone.
To “go away” is not just to fail at faith,
or disagree with his theology;
it’s to leave him companionless.
The human Jesus, right on the edge of his own hurt.
For all the love that flowed,
his was still the loneliest job.

Maybe what Jesus most wants is not your religiosity,
not your fervent prayers, or your profound faith,
but just you. Your company.
Your willingness to be with him.
Maybe he doesn’t want your piety.
He just likes having you around.
Imagine that as joyful as the father is
to receive the prodigal son,
the Beloved is that happy to have you.
Maybe even a little sad without you.

You don’t have to do anything heroic.
Just keep him company.
I tell you, there are times
he will want that more than anything.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             When many of his disciples heard it, they said,
            “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?”
                         —John 6.60

Jesus,
I am not so weak as to need platitudes,
though I savor them.
Give me the difficult sayings—
hard to understand,
harder to trust.
Wedge my heart out of its ruts.
Free me from my smug understanding.
Threaten my sure disbelief.
Unbalance me so I have to lean into you.
I know you’ll catch me when I fall.

(Faith is not the high-wire; it’s the falling.)

Beloved, teach me to accept what is hard,
to trust what is given,
and to keep at it.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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The sun comes up and puts its arms around the world,
which leans in and looks up like a child in its mother’s bosom,
and the birds sing about that, all their warbling songs
and their chittering songs and their playground songs.
Clouds in their long white robes
burgeon across the sky, furling and unfurling,
and the white pines nod, and the red oaks nod,
and the beech and the birch leaves flutter,
and the grasses wave and bow and wave.
Dew sings its fuzz of light, and little white moths applaud.
The wild daisies seem to know something, and the goldenrod,
and the white clover knows and the purple vetch knows .
The little brook recites its rosary, clicking the beads.
The morning light rises and rises
as if it is about to ask something,
like the ocean over and over coming to the shore;
and the meadowlarks take up the question the sun is asking,
asking something of the world,
and because you are part of it, breathing,
asking you as well:
if you are willing, here, now,
to go ahead and be part of it,
to be part of the unfolding of this astonishing day,
to be at least this much of the miracle.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Consider the monarch,
beyond the miraculous stained glass
window of its wings, seashells of scales arrayed
light and dark, sunlight and night-black,
each in its place, gilding the meadow with its art;
beyond its legs, thinnest jointed, muscled hairs
that grasp and walk; or its tender, curled proboscis
that uncurls and reaches deep to drink of nectar;
beyond its thousand-paneled eyes, consider:
that it is here at all.
That these flimsy wings, these little plates of dust
that flap with such naive abandon, such feeble hope,
such confident weakness, and carry it hither and thither
with seeming helplessly random wandering,
have borne this creature through winds and currents,
around storms and cities and over superhighways—
and somehow, it is here.
That it is the great-grandchild of those famous pioneers
who flew south to Mexico, never having been there,
but who followed the wisdom passed down from
their great-grandparents, who flew north,
never having been here—yet it is here.
That this wisdom spanning seasons and continents
was carried by a caterpillar who, in the fullness of time,
wove itself a casket, crawled in, and devolved into mush—
just a soup of goo—and waited, until from the mush
a butterfly formed and grew, and in time
ruined its casket and emerged
and unfolded its ridiculously wrinkled wings,
still with the wisdom of how to get to Mexico
on those thinner-than-paper wings of black and gold
somehow preserved and carried from flower to flower—
and came to you.
Consider, then, when you feel overwhelmed,
and up against the odds, the likelihood
that by the grace that livens every living thing,
you too will endure.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.
             Whoever eats of this bread will live forever;
             and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
                         —John 6.51

Jesus gives himself to us, his whole life,
his time, his energy,
even putting his body on the line,
his flesh given over to us for the sake of love.
And we take that love into ourselves,
that loving, physical presence,
and it becomes part of us, part of who we are,
just like our food does.
It fills us and becomes us.
So now we are the body of that love.
And it lives on in us. It lives forever.
And in love we give ourselves away to others,
our time and our energy and even our bodies,
given over for the sake of love,
and that love becomes part of them,
and it lives on, and on….
That love that is us
lives forever.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Sit before the ocean and take in
how it reaches out to you over and over.
Notice how the wind moves around you,
making space for you.

The silence of the morning includes you.
The wildflowers in the pasture welcome your looking.
The evening breeze moves in and out of you
with comfortable familiarity.

Strangers in the street carry their wounds and dreams
in heavy plastic bags, not knowing what they’re waiting for.
Beyond the wall are broken hearts with room for you.
The noise of the city is not mindless but pleading.

Hear the world calling to you,
neither an emperor nor a beggar
but a lover, a spouse, calling you to come home,
to complete what longs to be whole.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood
             abide in me, and I in them.”
                         —John 6.56

God is not a god of hearsay,
a virtual god, an outsourced god.
No remote, second hand, copy-of-a-copy god.
This religion isn’t about what you believe,
that paper religion, an idea you can think about.
This religion isn’t a recipe; it’s the meal.
Real food. You digest it.

Jesus is not explaining God. He’s feeding us God.
He is the bread of God.
You have to eat it.
It surrenders itself inside you,
becomes part of you.
Don’t just think about it;
don’t merely believe. Eat it.

Take him in, this Jesus bread.
Savor the aroma of his love, his grace,
the flavor of his trust in God and in you.
Wrap the mouth of your soul around him and eat.
See how he tastes on the tongue of your heart.
Bite off a chunk of that forgiveness,
chew it gratefully, and swallow it all.
Drink in that presence with you in every Gethsemane,
every Golgotha, drink it in and let it fill you.
Take all of who Jesus is into yourself.
Stuff yourself with him.

You are what you eat.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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These, on this pebbly shore,
four white stones beside each other,
narrow and peaceful,
are my fingerbones,
where they came to rest long ago.

There is my clavicle exposed
in the sagebrush root,
welcoming summer and winter alike.
My teeth sparkle in the glass case
of the jewelry store; I don’t mind
no one knows they were mine.

Look, you can see my intricate foot bones
embedded in this old stone,
how they stand out against the gray;
sacrum and ilium scooped out of the glacier;
femur and fibula fallen on the forest floor,
generously giving themselves
to moss and fungus and burrowing moles;
ladder of my ribs in the snow-laden branches
of the white pine, no longer needing to guard my heart;
and there in the stream a bed of my skulls,
no longer thinking so hard as the water flows over them.
That wisp of cloud passing overhead
is my breath of eons ago.

I see these things with eyes that are oceans,
through trees and rivers of nerves,
momentarily assembled from the chalk cliffs,
I, the bones of God.

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