Unfolding Light

          When you hear of wars and insurrections,
          do not be terrified, for these things must take place first,
          but the end will not follow immediately.
                       —Luke 21.9

Nation will rise against nation.
Even the rich will war against the poor,
with plagues and famines.
But even the end of an era is not the end.
Life is greater than emperors.

There are rough spots, like this, on humanity’s path.
Generations from now, they will speak of these times.
They will remember some rulers, a war or two.
They will have no names for the faithful
who remained steadfast, who passed on
love and wisdom to the next generation.
We will be as invisible to them
as we are to the emperor of this age.
But as long as we convey grace,
even to those who do not yet know they are called,
the end will not come,
and those yet unborn will marvel
at the long history of love.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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         The days will come
         when not one stone will be left upon another;
         all will be thrown down….
         This will give you an opportunity to testify.
                                      —Luke 21.6, 13

          Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.
                                     —John 2.19

Let go of human things;
         hang onto God.
                  •

When sacred structures fall apart,
        the Holy Presence will dwell in us ourselves.
                  •

When people can no longer find forgiveness
        in old systems,
        the community of faith itself
        will have to bear forgiveness to them.
                  •

No single stone is sacred;
        they are all needed to make a temple.
        Stay connected.
                  •

Don’t expect society to go your way.
        Bear witness to another Way.
                  •

When the temple falls
            we become the temple.
                  •

When the world around you descends into darkness,
        you can still shine with light.
                  •

The reason you were born,
        the purpose for which God brought you into this world,
        is to bear God’s forgiving presence
        in a world that is desperate for it.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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          Before they call I will answer,
           while they are yet speaking I will hear.
                       —Isaiah 65.24

My beloved,
you do not have to call out to me,
that I may hear you through clouds of distance,
across the great chasm of strangeness
between human and divine.
To me you do not call out, but in.
I am within you, in your deepest heart.
Within your joys and worries,
your strengths and wounds, I am there.
Your shouts of hope are my voice in you.
Your cries of despair, your pleas for grace,
are my longing in you.
Far beneath your understanding
there cries an unmet soul-hunger,
an unfinishedness like baby birds, beak up,
in the closed-in silence that finds no words,
but burns, heavy within you, yearning:
that is my spirit.
Your prayers give voice
to your hearing me hear you.
Beloved, before you love,
I am your Love.
Before you pray,
I am already your answer.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Perfect silence, hold me still.

Forgiving grace, set me free.

Infinite mercy, fill me gently.

Courageous love, bear me over.

Ridiculous joy, let’s do this.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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          The Holy One is gracious and merciful,
                    slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
          The Holy One is good to all,
                    and God’s compassion is over all that God has made.
                       —Psalm 145.8-9

This gospel is repeated over and over in scripture.
Some want to modify it, qualify it, compromise it,
or dilute it with some kind of divinely justified meanness.
But that’s not God; that’s just meanness.

There are two religions. One is the Religion of Being Right.
“Get it right,” God says, “or I’ll punish you.”
The other is the Religion of Being in Love.
“I love you,” God says. “Don’t you want to live like that?”

You can’t have both. If you follow all the rules,
sooner or later you’ll hurt somebody. If you love everybody,
sooner or later you’ll break a rule.

They’re both in the Bible. But see which one Jesus chooses,
over and over. “I desire mercy, not performing sacrifices.”
Even God’s judgment is not punishment, but love.

The greatest goal of our faith is to perfect our love,
that it be untainted by anger or self-righteousness.
This is not a discipline of trying harder, but of accepting
more deeply, more freely, the perfect love we are given.

Shed the anger, your own and God’s,
and let God be perfectly compassionate
so that you may be perfectly compassionate.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Let these leaves be in you, rich
in the loveliness of their renunciation.

Let the gracious confidence of trees be yours,
who offer without the smallest sense of loss.

This is simply the day it is, and the season.
There is no argument, no clinging

to leaves, or the need for leaves; no more
resistance to their falling than to their budding.

The trees do not protest, or even hope.
They calmly stand and sow their gentle

flecks of color in the woods.
What happens is perfectly all right.

Whatever departs from you will shine,
bathed in the light of your release.

Let these leaves be in you, who in the varied
radiance of their surrender say simply, “Yes.”



________________
Weather Report

Loss;
moderate winds of time,
increasing throughout the day,
will blow most everything away,
except the sunlight,
which remains stoutly unaffected.
Expect a warming trend,
and increasing humility.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Sometimes when I feel inadequate
I come here, where I have erected my monument.
A brass plaque declares
my accomplishments, my deserving.

It’s a tourist trap. An old castle, king long dead.
A deserted mall. A ghost town.
Nobody lives here.
I abandon these ruins.

I come home to you.
In the candle light
there is bread at the table,
and talk late into the night.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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          They asked: In the resurrection,
          whose wife will the woman be?
                                 —Luke 20.33

Jesus says: No one’s.
We are all children of the resurrection,
children of God—siblings.
What that means for us after we die,
we’ll have to see.
But even now: we are all siblings,
all one, which the final revealing will reveal.
In the Real Life, masked by this one,
we are not divided by families,
even marriage, but united:
married to everyone, to all Creation.
We are to love, honor and cherish
no one any less than our beloved spouse.
Stand among trees and say “We are kin.”
Go to a river and greet your sister.
Behold the crowd on the street
and declare “I am yours.”
Thus will you know a bit
of the mystery of resurrection.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Halloween seems scarier this year,
maybe because everything is scary,
monsters let loose,
masked people at the door
(not asking for candy),
people costumed, not what they appear,
women made pretty little things or witches.
The planet more and more
like a boiling cauldron.
A ruined House. A haunting.
A dusk of fear, a pall of dread.
Something actually bad is afoot.
Death walks the streets
all casual like it owns the place.
But all dressed up and happy, see,
so nobody really has to freak.

That’s what makes it scary, the lie.

But listen: it’s not the end, it’s only the Eve.
On the day after, come all the saints,
the kind and calm and steady,
the hopeful and courageous,
who have faced these monsters before,
who have “come through the great tribulation”
and know how to do this.
And we ourselves, having gotten
the heebie-jeebies out of our system,
join them in the long, hard march
right smack dab through the nightmare
to something peaceful and beautiful.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Can one be free of one’s ghosts?
Oh, believe in them: shadows of the past
unreleased, trailing their tatters,
still trying to be, unable to have been.
Look at us, bending over the stones,
always with such love and remorse.

To be free of them
you have to look. Touch and see.
Become permeable as a ghost,
the world seeping through you.
You have to become more real than ghost,
solid, touching, touched.
Run your heart’s fingers over the
smooth warm wood of this morning.
Notice the grain in the words
of the one speaking to you.

Let what is real consume
what is only suspected.
The shadow of a doubt
evaporates in light.
Its invisibility cloak disappears.
It finally dies, fading
from its belligerent shades
into the dark mass of real things,
the vanishment of regret forgiven,
the substance of beginning anew,
the heft of this day’s joy.

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