Month: October 2024

             Then the Holy One answered Job out of the whirlwind:
             “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
             Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth?”
                         —Job 38.1, 4, 18

Job’s friends insist he must have done something
to deserve his suffering.
Job dissents… but finally breaks,
and asks God, “OK, I give up. Why do we suffer?”
God’s answer, mostly, is no answer:
You don’t know what you’re talking about;
you couldn’t comprehend what I might say.
Do you think you’d do better at running the world?
Yet notice that in showing Job how small he is,
God shows him (for three chapters!) how great Creation is.
Yes, you suffer, because you’re a fragile creature who cares.
(There is no “why.” Suffering happens.)
But look at the Whole: you’re not just a little suffering individual;
you’re part of a great, beautiful, wonderful world— a good world.
Let the whole thing, not just your little bit of it, be your reality.
When you suffer, think of the whole universe.
Yes, there is suffering in it, some of it yours;
yet, all in all, it’s good.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             The Human One came not to be served
             but to serve.
                         —Mark 10.45

The Chef, a great creator, cooks up your life,
a whole gorgeous person,
with all your gifts and faults,
your wounds and beauty,
skills and resources,
with the Chef’s distinct taste
in every savory bite,
and the Chef puts the steaming plate of your life
on the counter and says, “Order up!”
Now, do you take it off into the corner
and eat it all yourself,
or do you serve it, all of your life,
to the hungry world that awaits?


                Whoever wishes to be great among you
                must be your server.
                          —Mark 10.43

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             They said to him,
             “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left,
             in your glory.”
                         —Mark 10.37

Oh, James and John, you impudent, arrogant fools!
How blatant—your vanity, your selfishness!

Yep. And I confess, I’m right there with you.
I assume I belong in the inner circle,
in a privileged place, and feel wronged if I’m not.
Straight white Christian male—surely I’m in.
(Christian nationalism, white supremacy…
I’m not that far removed, am I?)

Placing myself at the center of the world,
I wound the world.
Seeking priority, I violate our oneness.

God, give me the heart to repent
of my self-centeredness, my entitlement.
Give me the humility to see you
in those I want to outclass.
Give me compassion to outweigh my ego.
Give me courage to trust your grace,
not my deserving.
Give me faith to know
the last and the least and the lost are loved,
and the wisdom to know myself among them.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Like this cloud above you
that has drunk of lakes and seas
and yet passes so lightly overhead,
whose edges expand into air
or mount up like sculptures
or pour down into the earth where you sit,

like this earth
that has drunk of clouds
and issues forth with grasses and trees,
whose surface always hides
fomenting secrets, unraveling like vines,

like this vine that emerges from earth,
bursting forth blossoms
that at first you couldn’t see, then fruits,

inside you an immense possibility
swells, a great temple opens,
a hand reaching wide with something,
a warm, alert animal rises with unexpected beauty,
music expanding and expanding—
a call for which, in perfect harmony,
a response is forming in you:
an annunciation, a promise inside you,
waiting for you.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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                  Indigenous Peoples Day

They tried to erase you.
Your place. Your story. Your belonging.
You are still here.
They tried to silence you,
your dreams, your songs, your language.
You are still here.
They tried to conquer you,
your faith, your dances, your spirit.
You are still here.
They attempted a world without you,
the ghost people afraid of your bodies,
afraid to be neighbors, siblings, friends.
And so the old whitewashed stories,
the old reason to steal your water, your trees,
to mine your sanctuaries and poison your earth,
the old command to destroy whole villages,
the old, old nightmare trail of tears—
(gas chambers, auction blocks, barbed wire wall,
they are all the same).
And you are still here.
Displaced in place, homeless in your homeland,
yet vibrant, courageous, thriving,
all over the world you are here.
Our failure will multiply until you are welcomed.
For you are still here, and forever will be.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             Many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.
                         —Mark 10.31

Which means, of course, a circle.
First, the Great Upheaval:
“the powerful brought down from their thrones,
and the lowly lifted up;
the hungry filled with good things,
and the rich sent away empty,”
and then the Great Circling:
all of us together, each one first and last,
each a part of one whole,
held in one another’s hands,
all of us facing each other,
with all our differences and disagreements,
our strange and varied languages and values and traditions,
all of us in the circle, belonging, cherished, honored.
None are above or beneath, ahead or behind.
We are all here.
And our hereness, our oneness, our encirclement,
the last-being-first-and-the-first-being-last,
is divine.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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When the flood waters scrape it all away
we recoil at the knives
of what once was, or should have been,
that is not,
the jagged edge of what we wanted
and still want
but can no longer.

And yet all of that (yes, so dear,
which is why the rich man went away grieving)
is the camel that couldn’t pass through the needle’s eye.

But you have.
Maybe shoved, but you have come through,
yes, with sorrow and trauma, but through
the needle’s eye of loss,
into this world.

You, whole and alive, are here,
along with so many
who have also been drawn
through that same needle’s eye,
drawn on the thread of grief,
by the hand of love.

For love has also come through. Love is unburdened,
and passes through any needle’s eye,
through any wall, through any grave.

Let yourself be stitched, then,
with all the others, in life’s fabric.
The whole wounded world needs your love,
the torn fabric needs the thread of your grace.
That is why you are here.
Amidst the mourning, the picking up of pieces,
the starting again,
keep loving.
In the end, it is all that survives disaster,
and all that redeems it.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             “If I go forward, God is not there;
             or backward, I cannot perceive God.
             I look to the left, God is hidden;
             I turn to the right— nothing. Nothing.”
                         — Job 23. 8-9

It’s true: the God we’re seeking isn’t there—
you know, The Big Guy, that Huge Person,
the cartoon God, who does what we want,
who intervenes now and then but not always,
a God we can see and hear and touch,
or at least imagine.
Nope. There’s no such thing.

God is not a spirit but Spirit itself:
Love itself, Divine Wholeness,
Gracious Life Force,
the Delight in which everything is One,
Womb of life, blessing, and grace.

Is that too spacey, too woo-woo?
Yes. That’s the point.
(How badly we want God to be smaller—finite!—
knowable, and a whole lot like us.
How often we want the feeling
more than we want God!)
But God is beyond our sensing or knowing,
beyond our labeling—infinite, unsearchable—
and yet present, like gravity,
affecting everything, blessing everything.

You will rarely if ever “feel God’s presence”
any more than you feel the rotation of the earth
or the gifts of your DNA.
But let yourself love someone. There.
Or hold still and let a bug crawl across your wrist.
You both partake of Life.
Feel the bug, and your oneness.
Let yourself care about the bug.
There.

Trust grace and be kind,
and in that experience you will know God,
the One, Holy, present in every simple thing.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own…”
                         —Mark 10.21

What you lack is lack.
You have so much, you don’t need eternal life,
don’t need God.

To receive eternal life you have to be empty enough.
You have to sell everything, give it all away.
You have to live in radical trust.
Sometimes trust is deepest when it’s all there is.

Be mindful of what you cling to,
and what you would gladly spend to find blessing,
what you would drop to be free.
And drop it.

Practice trust and generosity.

Practice letting go and giving away.
When you’ve given away what you can,
what you’re left with is what can’t be taken from you:
infinite life.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good?
             No one is good but God alone.”
                         —Mark 10.18

And also, everyone is good;
no one is any more so than another.

Why do we judge? Why must we rank
and compare and, inevitably, compete?

Everyone is a mix of “good” and “bad”—
and none of our judgments is real.

Yes, there is evil, and there are hurtful actions,
and none of us is entirely free of them.

And there is grace and goodness in all of us,
hidden even in the cruelest tyrant.

But our judgments are mixed,
clouded by our not-goodness;

the sinful fruit of the Tree was not knowing good and evil
but thinking we do.

Resist evil actions, and strive for goodness,
but know our discernment is never pure.

Act with kindness toward all;
and goodness will prevail.

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