Unfolding Light

Walking in the woods,

thinking of other things, 

so, not really in the woods, 



I traveled on a path 

that sooner or later will disappear, 

among trees that will outlive me. 



What difference will I make 

to these trees, or this path, or

anything in the world, now or hence? 



Pondering my nothingness,

bereft of legacy, I walked, 

still elsewhere. 



But then that blank was interrupted

by a bird call, unfamiliar, 

sparkling, totally without reason.



A few trilly little grace notes

and one clear bell tone,

some kind of prayer or love song.



I stopped. I looked. A flash of brown

may have been it, or a leaf. Then 

stillness. Just woods, with a bird in it.



Something flowed up in me,

a spring of clear joy, burbling.

I was back in the woods.



Not the song, but the bird itself,

merely being its little brown being, 

singing, hidden, given.



You never know how your mere being

lights someone’s world, brings them back.

I watch now, for what speaks.



The little villages of moss on trees,

the kid who rides his squeaky trike

in the driveway of the old grey house.



__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Six days ago he said he would be crucified.
We said “Impossible.” Our sense of decency
insisted. It was unthinkable.

Now it is August 6^th, an ordinary day.
8:15 a.m. Children are walking to school
along the Ota River, past the Genbaku Dome.

The sound of a plane, high up, hardly noticed.
Then a burst of light. Brilliant light.
The mountaintop of our science.

He seems to be talking with the long dead.
He has already drowned and come up,
passed through the light into the light.

No darkness now can overcome him.
Infinitely present, burnt offering, the least of these.
His shadow is scorched into the wall behind him.

Cross and garden, in a flash.
Luminous presence in the firebomb of our sin.
Irradiated by passion to be there in our worst.

All revealed, beyond seeing.
He is pure light. You can see through him.
Then you can’t see. A cloud fills everything.

We have explanations. But the horror is not shaken.
“This is my child, my Beloved. Pay attention.”
Then nothing. Just him. And ashes.

Still he shines through our cruelty,
transfigured amid our evil, still shining.
Slow to learn, we will repeat this in Nagasaki.

After, he blesses our stunned silence. No words.
Only after dying and rising may we speak,
and then not of glory, but the presence.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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The saga of Joseph and his brothers
is not just about an ancient family.
They are us.

The one we would dismiss,
the one we would be done with,
is our sibling.

The enslavers are never the good guys.
The one sold, the one enslaved,
is the story’s hero.

                   •

And within: where is my Joseph,
the excellence I’m afraid of,
the grace I seek to banish?

I may sell it away, but it will prevail,
first shame and then tame me,
and save me in the end.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Troubled seas. Arguments of waves.
Wind screaming at you.
Boat not doing well.

Suddenly an apparition,
possibly a ghost, more impossibly
Christ on the waters.

How can you know? A ghost
would merely scare you;
a fantasy would rescue you.

No, the real Christ will beckon you
out of your flailing-but-all-you-have boat,
deeper into the storm.

Deeper into trusting,
into holding that hand that holds you,
drowning into your savior.

Then, rising from the birthing waters,
baptized, you climb back into the boat
you no longer need.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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There can be evil in this good world
because in the beginning
when God said ”Let there be light”
the world was born from wanting.
Wanting can go many ways—
divorced from trusting, many bad ones.
The spark inside every evil is urge—
energy toward something,
which is movement, transformation—
which is divine.
Every evil carries the seed
of its own redemption.

All the evil in the world
is no different from mine.
It’s merely the fear
that we don’t have what we need.

But I do.
I just need to practice needing God.
When my trust overtakes my wanting,
I am on the right road.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Traveling between wounds
we pause, make some space in time,

allow the evening pall to be laid over us,
darkness tucked up under our chin,

a stillness purely granted, lowering us
into a well deeper than thought.

Out of the shadows comes another,
strange, but our own.

We’ve kept in shadows, so thought
we had no shadow, but now

it seizes us, grapples, as if
not to destroy but to hold us

to something. We grapple,
not to defend but to hold it

so we can see it. What is it
that knows us better than we do,

that knows our weak spots,
that has such a grip on us?

Our heaven and our earth thrash
like desperate lovers

mirrored, cheek to cheek,
not to conquer but to alter.

There is no victory, only embrace.
As morning light unfolds

the mystery recedes again to shadow,
but not without a blessing, a name.

What we wrestle with
makes us.

We limp gracefully
into our

broken
open future.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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It is said God dwells in thick darkness.
We can’t imagine how thick.

Sometimes the darkness is so thick
it holds you up.

Sometimes the mystery is so complete
the fear so deep, you can only trust.

Sometimes in the deepest dark, alone,
we feel another hand, unseen, in our hand.

And sometimes the darkness is so solid
that the darkness itself gently holds our hand.

Sometimes the unknowing is so absolute
you know you couldn’t have made this up.

Sometimes darkness
is a way of knowing God.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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When turmoil surrounds me I sometimes internalize it:
it becomes inner turmoil. Then I get used to it.
I get habituated. I get addicted
to my own chaos and uncertainty.
But once, on a stormy point—waves crashing—
some seagulls found a spot to sit on the water
where the waves never broke. They rested.
God, give me grace to be at peace, even in the storm,
to let the turmoil pass over me like wind,
to know the upheaval is not mine,
to trust that within any chaos
there is peace that is you—
to rest, even in the storm.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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When they ask the elders “How did you do it?
With so little, against so much, how did you do it?”
the answer is always the same.
With five loaves of love and two fish of courage
we marched for justice.
With five loaves of wisdom and two fish of hope
we stood against the tyrant.
With no more than what I could carry in my heart
I left the abuse.
With only a step and a step I marched and stumbled
through recovery.
With scraps and fragments we fed the hungry.
The loaves and fishes we offered up.
The grace was provided.
Kindness multiplies. With small acts and generous hearts
we changed the world.

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