Unfolding Light

Memories and molecules
intermingle magically.
They are all here, present,
in your body.

Little bits of the four leggeds
and the winged ones
and the creeping and flitting ones
and the rooted ones
who have been here where you are
for ten thousand years
are still here, in your body.

The bodies lynched, crucified,
burned at stakes and starved
in prison cells are in your cells.
Enslaved bodies, whiplashed,
still erect, are in you.

The flesh of those who marched for freedom,
the strength of those who stood,
the breath of those who sang,
still live in you.

Don’t despair of your own strength.
The whole earth is alive in you.
When they hear your voice
they all stand up.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             There appeared a woman
             with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years.
             She was bent over, unable to stand up straight.
                                                                —Luke 13.11

What is bent over in you?
A gift repressed… a feeling denied…
a story unheard… a strength decayed…
a hope, a hope, still hoping…?

Not everything, maybe, but something
is being healed,
standing up in you.

Don’t be the ruler who says “Not yet.”
Be the woman
who stands.

There may not be a final cure,
but sit still long enough
to feel a hand on your back.

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

Went to a funeral today. (Yeah, I know. I got to all of them….) Rough crowd, lots of leather and tattoos. Nobody had a problem coming up with black to wear. Lots of black. And lots of love. Real, not rehearsed. Awkward, understated, tearful & heartfelt. Lots of talk about loss and struggle and carrying on, getting free. They didn’t talk much about me. But I felt right at home. Funny, where I find myself sometimes.

Keep your heart open.

Love, God


_______________

        Weather Report

High humanity,
increasing from one degree of glory to another.
The warm, moist atmosphere
of people being people
will rise and blow through your life
like a storm.
Participation 100%.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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God’s desire is no political agenda, nor an economic vision.
It is simply kindness toward all,
a world that includes everybody, that offers beauty,
that gives life, free and abundant,
tendered in verdant hands,
that weaves us together in one living being,
one body, one life.
It is simply passion that the wanting child be fed:
for she is your own.

The “self-made” who disbelieve are the wounded
whom the Spirit sends us to heal;
the “successful” who cling to their food
are the oppressed who need to be set free.
Only the grateful are wise;
only the compassionate see clearly.
Only those who would suffer to free others
are truly free.

The divine in you is not the power to conquer wrong
but simply brave kindness.
It has its own power to open eyes, to set free.

The martyrs and prophets,
who have known glares and stones,
pogroms, marches and fire hoses,
each trail of tears the same Via Dolorosa, they know:
this is not a goal or agenda, a plan or a program;
it is not born of human will at all.
It is a gift of God, the life of the Spirit breathing in you,
the maker of worlds commanding, “Let there be light.”

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             There appeared a woman
             with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years.
             She was bent over, unable to stand up straight.
                                                                —Luke 13.11

Jesus is always looking for where it hurts.
She is bent in a perpetual bow, eyes down.
He touches her, and she rises.

Of course the ruler objects. It’s the Sabbath.
Better to leave her suffering than disturb the order.
This, too, is where it hurts.

Grace lifts up; the ruler presses down.
He’s bent over his rules, unable to see.
Jesus opens his eyes: Sabbath is for setting free.

Always watching, the Beloved is,
for what hurts, and what keeps us hurt,
for where it hurts and also why.

Satan and his rulers tolerate only those healings
that don’t disturb the kingdom in which, sorry,
that’s the way it is, some people just have to suffer.

The Beloved contradicts. Not just his miracles,
all his ordinary acts are disruptive.
Sometimes the rule is where it hurts.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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There is no reason to laugh, other than to laugh.
And you laugh. Oh, human, I love you.
You pray to me and have no idea what you’re doing,
but I love it.
When things matter you turn to flowers and songs.
When you are sad, you weep oceans.
You express grief with beauty.
You tell stories that become people, eventually yourself.
You invent things that are silly and lovely and useless
and impossible not to like.
You struggle, and fail, and don’t give up,
as if there is something of the stars in you.
You laugh at yourself, especially when it hurts.
When you are small, wonder carries you around,
and when you are older, you trade places.
Even when you do terrible things—
especially when you do terrible things—
you are a small precious child just trying to survive.
And you survive.
I lavish my delight on you.
Of course you object: “But I’m so messed up!”
Darling, you are more messed up than you know.
But you’re mine. And I’m so glad I have you.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light www.unfoldinglight.net
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Sometimes to be made “new”
means being changed, made better,
“new and improved.”

But sometimes it just means fresh,
in the moment. Now.
Each day is a new one.

I needn’t seek the continual drama
of one version of myself after another,
though changes come.

I can enter into this moment—
a happening, like one breath,
new, present, and ready.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             You know how to interpret
             the appearance of earth and sky, but why
             do you not know how to interpret the present time?
                                                          —Luke 12.56

Oh, we see the orange blades of fascism
knifing out through the leaves.
We feel that autumn edge to our easy days,
the coming frost of fear.
We know what we’re seeing,
the erasure of truth, the hoarding of power,
soldiers in the streets
and neighbors disappearing.
We know how to interpret these.

But there are other signs hidden in the present moment:
the great tidal movement of compassion,
strangers holding hands,
the tilting of the earth toward light,
the buds of God swelling,
the hands of Love on the clay as it turns on the wheel.
The present moment is not just these minutes.
(Relax; you will arrive in time.)
It’s not jut these days, or even years.
(Yes, this will get harder before it gets easier.)
The present moment belongs to the eternity of grace;
this moment, this year and this eon are enfolded.
The final resurrection is also today.
The Suffering One is already present,
who inhabits every tragedy with mercy.
The end, in which all is made well and whole,
is also in this moment.
The present time isn’t just one phrase,
but the whole story.
Eyes open, friends. Even now the Mystery expands.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             “Do you think that I have come
              to bring peace to the earth?
             No, I tell you, but rather division!”
                                      —Luke 12.51

This is not the division of enmity
but of standing up for what you know
even if others will think ill of you,
even those you love.

When you are faithful to who you are,
what you truly think and feel,
it may displease some,
who want you to conform, or at least pretend.

We do it all the time.
We go along to get along.
Sometimes “just be yourself”
is an invitation to profound loneliness.

The Beloved knows.
Take courage to stand apart
and let others navigate their own anxiety.
You’re not alone.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Some days in my sore feet I find the dust
of your Judean hills; I feel its stones.

In my hunger, or my trembling,
your forty days in the desert.

I see in the mirror right there in my bald spot
the scars of your thorns.

There in my x-ray is your pierced side,
the holes in my hands and feet.

In my eyes, when I dare, your seeing
the invisible woman, the troubled man.

In my hands your power to heal,
in my bones your trust in our Abba.

Sometimes for a moment, a moment,
I disappear in you, and am whole.

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