Month: May 2025

             “My sheep hear my voice.
             I know them, and they follow me.”
                                      —John 10.27

Beloved,
give me grace today
to listen for your voice,
to know the voice of mercy,
the call of delight,
and to distinguish it from the voice of fear,
the voice of resentment or reaction.
Help me listen for the voice that knows me,
the presence that honors my soul,
that delights in me, that magnifies me.
Give me grace to trust
the voice of love,
and to follow.

Breath prayer:
                         Listen … follow

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 0:58 — 1.3MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

         These are they who have come out of the great ordeal;
         they have washed their robes
         and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
                                      —Revelation 7.14

In the shadowed valley
despite all cruelty
they have submitted
to a mighty kindness,

opened themselves
to a breath flowing
through them for others,

an eternal river
that will find its way,
even through death.

It has torn much away—
for some their very bodies—
but the life can’t be stopped,
this river that bears them in love.

They have been brought through.
They are changed.
There is nothing they cannot touch.
Though they seem to have lost everything,
and appear torn—dead, even—
the light is still in them,
and the breath, and the song,
singing.

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:07 — 1.5MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

             “As a youngster you would put yourself together
             and go where you wanted.
             But as you mature you reach out.
             You let others work with you.
             You allow yourself to be led
             to places you wouldn’t have chosen.”
                                      —John 21.18 (my version)

It’s how you grow in faith.
It’s how you mature as a person.
It’s how you deal with getting old.

You get over thinking your life is about you.
You open yourself to the pull
of your belonging to a greater body.

You tend to relationships.
You let others be your center, your purpose.
Your goal is not having, but conveying.

You give up trying to be in control.
You allow yourself to be led.
You entrust yourself to grace.

You are willing to find yourself
in new places—scary, even—with courage.
Because you are guided. Accompanied. Held.

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:32 — 2.1MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

             “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
                         —Acts 9.4

Some call what happened to Saul
on the way to Damascus his conversion.
Something in him got changed,
even his religious outlook.
But really it was a call:
an awakening to a new purpose,
guided and empowered by the Spirit of love,
rooted in a sudden awareness
of God present in those who are persecuted,
awareness of the suffering of others,
and his own part in that.

We don’t need some dramatic experience
with light and voices (and no horse, please:
that’s in Caravaggio, not in Scripture).
Listen for the cries of the world,
and surrender yourself to its healing.
Listen for the beckoning of the Beloved,
and look inward.

Breath prayer:
                          Listen    …    look

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:16 — 1.7MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS