Unfolding Light

When you fell and skinned your knee
and your mommy kissed it and made it better
it really did make it better.

How much of your agony is not the hurt
but the need for someone to hold you?

Friend, we live in a crowd unheld.

You have been given the heart
to kiss the world better,
to seek the hurting
one child at a time,
and hold them and their hurt.

Do so, and even at a distance, with strangers,
as in any good embrace,
you find yourself miraculously
held.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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          In hope we were saved.
          Now hope that is seen is not hope,
                    for who hopes for what one already sees?
          But if we hope for what we do not see,
                    we wait for it with patience.
                                 —Romans 8.24-25

Behold this mystery: severed flesh knows how to heal.
Sundered tissues reach out for each other,
join hands, embrace, reweave a wholeness.
I know this. I trust it. This is my hope.

The sower goes out to sow in hope,
not with some magical power of wishing,
but the sure knowledge of how seeds work.
There will be setbacks, and a harvest.

Hope is not wishing for a certain future,
but trusting in the grace that is present.
Paul is wrong. I hope in God’s salvation
because I do see it. It is already here,

the grace that spawns forgiveness,
the courage that seeks justice,
the love that reaches out, that risks boldly,
the patience that endures.

One may hope for something yet to come,
but we hope in something already here.
There will be setbacks, failures and disasters.
But grace is not future tense. Already present.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Little boats moored to buoys in the bay

          softly bump each other,



cuddling like cats in the fog,

          that curls



around the pilings of the pier, posts that appear
          then vanish in the peaceful fog.



The boats nod as if sleeping, nuzzling

          the necks of the pier, knowing



more than we think, moored

          for the moment, but mindful



of wind-thrown waves that have washed them,

          wild storms that have tossed them.



They know the sea is there, silent for now,

          serene and at rest; they sense



its vast distances, its depths, and its dangers.

          They don’t forget where they are.



They’re lucky, they know, to live here,

          to lie on this languid water,



to sail again tomorrow, to taste again

          the salt, to tack into the wind—



like us, who stand here, steadfast

          in our faith that God stays with us still,



whose fog-veiled seas may save or sack us 

          but in the end will silently receive us,



whose hurricanes may harry us, yet

          who at last will have us home.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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The ants I wish to banish from my house
are such encouragement of industry,
teamwork and perseverance.
Even as I mitigate, I bless.

The knee that wakens me in pain
is sore because it’s healing.
Hobbling, I praise the miracle.

Sometimes the trucks that run the rumble strip
on the Interstate play a note right in tune
with our wind chimes. I sing along.

Purple vetch grows in the ditch-sides,
the lot corners, the weed patches.
I take a mouthful of the little purple blossoms
with humble thanksgiving.

Look for it.
Grace is a small masterpiece of art
in a really big frame.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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We’re invited to just be, without doing—
but even simply being,
a lot is being done.

While I sit in stillness my body is working,
lungs doing their mysterious alchemy,
nerve cells ferrying their messages,

tissues that are wounded
reaching out for one another,
doing the work of healing.

In my stillness this “I” is still,
and another is nestling with God,
exchanging secrets,

walking journeys I’ll never know,
or holding still while the Spirit
does surgery, or attaches wings.

In the stillness the Beloved is acting,
preparing miracles, stirring galaxies.
Even God is becoming.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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I sink into the slowness of it,
the mire: weak as a jellyfish,
having to be and not do,
dependent on others,
more like an infant
than I would choose if I could.
(Unless you become as a child…)
If I have the right spirit
it’s not a loss or even a challenge:
it’s spiritual advancement,
a gift of humility and faith,
an opportunity to receive grace.
(Blessed are the poor in spirit…)
To be a patient of patience
I release time from my grasp,
let it flow, and be present.
To be with the Beloved
I do nothing but be.
Perhaps the greatest achievement
is not to accomplish at all,
but to really, purely be,
and nothing else.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Here comes the Fourth of July,
when too many confuse God with America,
is if God weren’t the God of every nation,
every planet in every galaxy in the universe.
Preachers say we’re a Christian nation
but can’t name a single teaching of Jesus we embody.
But let’s do. Let’s become a Christian nation,
a people of mercy and compassion,
generosity and forgiveness.
Let’s prioritize healing (and health care) for everyone,
even the “undeserving,” and invite everyone
to the table—everyone—since, as Jesus says,
“God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.”
Let’s invite the poor, the disabled, the neglected.
Let’s enact policies that are “good news for the poor.”
Let’s declare the Jubilee of God, the forgiveness of debts,
and release to prisoners.
Let’s welcome the stranger and the immigrant
and do all those things the prophets told us to do.
Let’s welcome the multitudes around the throne
foretold in Revelation, “from every nation,
from all tribes and peoples and languages.”
I’d love to see us become a Christian nation.
Wouldn’t you?

_____
           I’m going to take next week off.
            I’ll see you the middle of July.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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You are doing nothing in particular,
but very much so,
gazing at the trickle in the gutter,
or maybe watching someone
lost in what they’re doing,
a mother nuzzling her baby,
a kid finger painting—

and for a moment the world
bursts from its seed,
everything that is exceeds,
teeming with itself, brimming.
Words fall open like hands
that spill what they can’t hold.
A superabundance of being
overflows the visible.
Divinity throbs, a frequency.
Astonishing as this is
it is not a distant realm,
not the least bit other,
but a hint of the All of you.
God seems to bend low, enfold you,
and whisper, “Yes we are, aren’t we?”

With a few breaths the moment passes
but now you can’t un-know it.
Forever now, what refuses to shine is only
keeping the secret.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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          I do not do the good I want,
          but the evil I do not want is what I do.
          Now if I do what I do not want,
          it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me.
                       —Romans 7.19-20

We lie, we cheat, we lash out.
We say, “I don’t know what got into me.”
Monsters. We all have monsters.

You can hear them breathing heavy under your bed.
You know they want to grab you
and make you do bad stuff.

You want to keep them locked away.
But lie down on your stomach and look under the bed.
Spend time with them.

Turns out they’re not mean. They’re scared.
All your greed, your bitterness, your meanness,
it’s just them being scared.

(You know why they breathe so heavy?
Because they get asthma hiding under your bed.
It’s a terrible, dusty, airless place but it’s safe.)

(You know why it seems they’ll grab you?
They need a hug. You’ve ignored them for years.
Give them a hug and they get less grabby.)

You know when Jesus went out into the desert
and “he was with the wild beasts?”
Yep. His monsters.

Befriend your monsters. Let them tell you
what they’re afraid of, how they got hurt.
After a while they stop being monsters

and become memories
and move next door
and you’re both a little more free.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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           I do not understand my own actions.
           For I do not do what I want,
           but I do the very thing I hate.
           It is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me.
           Who will rescue me from this body of death?
           Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Chief!
                       —from Romans 7.15-25

Our sin isn’t that we’re bad.
It’s that we don’t know how to trust God.
“Original” sin just means we were born that way.

Without trust in God, we’re slaves to our egos,
constantly trying to protect our little individual selves.
We don’t mean to; instinct kicks in, and we’re selfish.

Like Gollum protecting his Precious,
we’re constantly anxious about our self-worth.
It’s a deadening way to live.

The war between good and evil is a cage fight.
We can’t get out. We try to do the right thing,
but keep maiming ourselves. How do we win?

We don’t. God removes us from the fray.
We are forgiven. Nasty, broken, and beloved.
There’s no cage. No fight. Only our needs, and God’s grace.

The call—a gift, yet so hard!— is simply to trust that.
We get free, then crawl back into the cage.
And God removes us again. And bit by bit

we learn to trust. And to live like it.
Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ,
the Referee of Love.

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