Unfolding Light

The birth of Christ was not a mission trip
but a return.

A God of love is a God of real things.
The smell of hay, the feel of night wind.

Only in our poor, starved imaginations
was God ever far,

but is really ever so much more here
than anything here.

A family, a safe place, a foreign place,
a place endangered—God’s favorite place.

The birth is our awakening.
A manger’s rough wood is a holy place,

a prayer in the dark, a hope malnourished,
a friendship faltering, a life poorly lived:

these are the things, the real things,
to which the God of Being Here will always return.

A child’s awkward gift, a doubter’s question,
the way you breathe even as you read this.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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           Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth;
           for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.
                         —Revelation 21.1

The eighth day of Christmas,
eighth day of Creation,
starting anew.

You are given new life,
an unprecedented future,
but only if you stay in the present moment.

Each moment vanishes
the moment you live it,
and you are in another.

As you stand at the threshold of a new year,
it is true, the year stretches out
like a field of untouched snow before you,

but remember you are not living a whole year:
you live in this moment.
Now is your choice… and now… and now….

It is here, not in some far-off time or place, that God is.
It is here the infinite is revealed.
May this be a year of staying present.

Happy New Moment!

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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           Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth;
           for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.
                         —Revelation 21.1


The year has passed away.
Into its funeral pyre I throw my calendar.
All that has happened to me has happened.

I offer up the sacrifice of my regret.
All I have done, and all I have not done,
are gone now. I let them rest.

Only the great hymn remains:
“You are forgiven. You are beloved.
You are free.”

My victories are part of me;
I need not cling or rehearse.
I am who I am now.

I will not change the past.
I am in the present.
Letting go, I am held.

I am free to enter the future,
one moment at a time.
Letting go, I am held.

Breath prayer:
                          Held … free

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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A peasant girl huddles in the winter night
in a crude shelter, holding her newborn child.
There are dangers and difficulties,
but her eyes are on the child.
She simply loves him.
Rough shepherds, manly and dirty,
jostle for who is the toughest.
But in this moment they’re not trying so hard;
they’re smitten by the child.

Great kings attend, laden with their kingdoms
and the duties and privileges appertaining thereunto.
But in this moment their eyes are on the child,
and his poverty. They are willing to kneel,
to share their treasures.

Zealots gather, who would gladly beat the kings,
but in this moment they stare at the child,
and are made gentle in simple wonder.
The father takes all this in, and might be frightened,
but in this moment they are not strangers, they are family.
For a moment, they are not rulers or rebels,
no one is responsible or resentful or reprehensible,
they are all simply beloved people.
For a moment the Realm of God is fulfilled,
and the child, even in the cold, is most happy.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child.
                         —Luke 2.6

Stressed, unwelcomed,
you have borne your joy, carried it to full term.
In harsh places
you have shielded the wonder within.
In the deep night of the world’s abandonment
you have delivered your love,
that is our own deliverance.

Now caked with the stable’s sour crud
and birth’s sweet crud,
you rest.
Life has evoked life in you.
You have brought forth love,
yours and ours.
Rest in this.

There will be much to do,
the child will soon be hungry.
There will be shepherds.
There will be fleeing.
But now, in this peace,
rest.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             When he was twelve years old,
             the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem.
             When his parents did not find him,
             they returned to Jerusalem to search for him.
                         —from Luke 2.42-45

Sometimes it feels like we’ve lost him.
Even so soon after Christmas
the magic is gone.

But we find him eventually
in the true temple:
not some place of special power or mystique,
but that sacred place within.
Where is the temple
but in that silence in the holy of holies
in you?

When you can’t find the Holy One
you may be looking too far afield.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             The Word became flesh and lived among us.
                         —John 1.14

We come near to see
how near God comes.

Reaching out,
it is we who are held.

Taking in such love,
we ourselves are radiant.

Honoring the mother and child,
something in us is born.

Leaning in to look, how can we not
always lean toward the holy?

Allowing ourselves to be drawn
close to such loveliness,

we can’t help but love.
This is our salvation.

Behold this mystery:
even on a rough night

this peace that cradles us,
this love that loves us,

this tenderness
that comes upon us.




Deep Christmas Blessings,
Pastor Steve

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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The night’s quiet is song
waiting to be born.
The silence swells.
The darkness dilates.
The cosmos is hushed,
the stars all holding their candles.

Then— a birth—
and out burst the sopranos,
an alleluia of sky,
a confetti of angels,
the choir’s crazy noisemaking.

But then… hush. All hush,
taken aback
in speechless wonder
at the Word made flesh,
God’s hope entrusted
to a weak, needy infant.
Grace, infinite and splendid,
folded into this tiny space.
Words fail. Even songs.
Only the hush of hearts opened
like mangers to the warmth
of divine presence
wrapped in tender flesh,
to the mystery of a God
who so desires to be with us
even in this cold,
in this fractured world
that will soon crush the child.
Even among us
whose joy is swallowed in grief,
whose love caves in to fear,
the Eternal comes to dwell,
to be with us.
Smitten as if by a first kiss,
whelmed and flush, all hush.

This is the silence we return to,
over and over, through all our days.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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What you had to go through—
the smirks of lesser gods with better ideas,
our certainty you belonged higher up,
the violence of the emperors you threatened—

to come undefended, doomed and trusting,
to an unwed peasant mother
soon to become a refugee,
to a cold stable, a rough manger,
targeted by the regime,
to a dead-end path to an execution,

to come to the faltering heart, the fraying marriage,
the shattered city, the heartsick nation,
to the waiting room, the day room,
the back room, the courtroom,
to the projects, the rez, the unit, the camp,

to want to come, like a baby to be born,
like a mother in a fire going to her child,
like our nameless passions that will come out
in tears if we let them and otherwise if we don’t,
clouds that sooner or later will fall, will fall to their earth,
salmon struggling up a rushing stream,
a patient fighting back from a coma.

Our awe is to imagine you wanting
to come into the world like this.
And our worship is wanting like this
to come like this
into the world
like this.

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

Stars, come close.
Night, come tuck the blanket
of your darkness under our chin.
Winter, come and settle with us
for a night and tell us your story.

Blessed dark,
we entrust ourselves to you,
night of mystery,
womb of grace.

We are not afraid of the dark.
In the night, warmth.
In the dark, stars.
The beginning of winter,
the moment the Earth turns toward the sun.

As the Emperor climbs his throne,
the holy child descends.
Even the thickest shadows
can’t stop the light now.

                ______________     

              Southern Hemisphere

The Beloved has gathered
the warmth of all love and tenderness,
as fiery as sunshine,
and shoulders the mystery
(yes, the yoke is light)
and prepares to carry the light
into the darkness.

Even as the night begins to deepen,
the child comes to us, shining.

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