Month: October 2025

The Temple police are everywhere,
the Emperor’s soldiers watching.
Crucifixions happen daily, people taken,
cruelty substituting for order.
Arguments are launched
about who belongs, who is outside
the law. Everybody knows who’s targeted.
Suspicion, fear and anger float above ground
like smog everyone breathes.

But in the candle lit room
people gather at a table
from different tribes and parties,
rich and poor, and all are welcomed, all are fed.
Clear eyes. Warm smiles. Open hands.
It is a direct affront to the Emperor,
who can’t imagine this, but
the table transgresses his realm,
extends through the city,
across the nation, around the world, forever.
Children on far off islands hold hands
with elders on the tundra,
one meal, one prayer, one body.

The Emperor and his terror will die
one of these nights, his palace become ruins;
but the table will remain and welcome,
and the clear eyes and warm smiles will continue,
the bread be passed from hand to hand,
one prayer, one body,
till the end of time.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light www.unfoldinglight.net
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God won’t suddenly jump in and fix the world
any more than this poem will. But listen.
God is the mustard seed of goodness
that slips down between the cracks, and roots.
God is at it, in infinite small ways,
like a virus spreading, like radioactive waste,
like knotweed you can’t get rid of.
God crawls down into the lowest places,
creeping deeper and deeper, under stuff, behind things,
always the dirtiest places, the poorest, most ignored.
God is the mold in the basement of the Fortress,
spreading the love that rots the timbers of cruelty.
The Empire won’t suddenly turn generous,
the Presidential Palace sheltering refugees.
But it can’t seal itself against spring,
against the fragrance of mercy.
The realm of God is like an infection
for which there is no cure.
The world won’t soon be fixed,
but it can never be purified of love.

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:17 — 1.8MB)

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Amid the intricacies of your inner ear,
the vessels and instruments and wise listeners
that translate air into meaning,
is an ocean cave that magnifies
all the haunting cries of the earth,
all the moans and shrieks and calls and whispers,
hearing clearly even the private weeping
of small children and distant tribes.
There is a great tree in your inner ear
whose roots are in that ocean cave,
whose branches quiver with every bird song,
every sorrow or delight, every cry of wonder.
All these voices echo in the deep cavern
and do not die out. They are in you.

So it is that we often do not hear well,
with all the noise, and often feel
some real yet vanishing weight
we do not understand,
perhaps of grief or hope or joy, unspoken.

At times, therefore, we pause
in stillness and let the chorus complete its aria.
Heard, then, the voices calm
and become in us a clearer hearing,
a deeper wisdom.
We speak with the voice of hearing.

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:40 — 2.3MB)

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