Unfolding Light

           I have not come to bring peace but a sword.
                      —Matthew 10.34

The blade is not violence, but discernment,
separating truth from desire,
refusing to “go along to get along.”

The gospel of peace disturbs the powerful.
Someone will object. But you needn’t thrust.
You already have, with your upsetting mercy.

Be careful: how smoothly the knives come out!
It’s so easy to turn integrity into snottiness,
to defend truth by attacking people.

To take an unpopular stand, stand in it gently.
Disagree without defensiveness.
Uphold love with love.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:08 — 1.6MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

Maybe the sin wasn’t tasting
but possessing.
Adam had named everything, everything
in his own tongue. He had
a handle on it.
Except that one thing that wasn’t for him.

All that goodness piling up around them—
maybe wasn’t enough.
Somehow instead of deep trust
they learned to want everything.

Kept picking bananas,
among bananas
going soft.

In the distance, mountains unclimbed,
unclaimed. Maybe that lured them.

Maybe in the end that fruit,
piled up, rotting,
drove them out.

Spurning the deep, coveting the far,
we’re still at it,
dreaming of something better,
ruining paradise.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:10 — 1.6MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

Ah, my little humans,
you want so much for me to look like you, don’t you?
Yes, you are an image of me,
but I am infinite, and have infinite images.
You speak of my hands, my face,
but you could, if you thought of it,
speak of my wings, my flippers,
my leaves, my tentacles, my antennae.
Since all is within me, any is a fair image—
volcano, or zephyr, or gravity.
But the best is an image of my wholeness,
the infinitude of my variety.

You want my heaven wrapped around your earth,
don’t you?—the rest of the cosmos cold and void.
Well, you should see it.
The rest of the world,
of which you are not the center.
Galaxies, billions of them.
Yes, I am that big.

Surrender your arrogance.
You are not the only ones,
even the loveliest, wisest or most musical.
They are also in my image,
who do not look like you at all.
Yes, I am the God of beings you can’t imagine.
The universe, vast and teeming,
that’s a pretty good image,
its huge seemingly empty spaces
throbbing with my music.
When you give up because I’m unimaginable
you’re closer.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:47 — 2.5MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

          The Holy One said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh
          and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’
          Is anything too wonderful for God? At the set time
          I will return to you, in due season,
          and Sarah shall have a son.”
          But Sarah denied, saying, “I did not laugh,”
          for she was afraid. He said, “Yes, you did laugh.”
                       —Genesis 18.13-15

Don’t be afraid to laugh, even at the impossible.
The laughter of disbelief soon blossoms
into the laughter of joy.

We laugh at how foolish we are,
and also at how foolish we are not to see
how glorious we are.

Yes, and we laugh at how both of them
live so amiably in us.
Creatures so noble and silly deserve a laugh.

We laugh even in the face of despair,
for our hope is not in a possible future,
but in a seed already planted and growing.

We laugh because even when death itself
is set in stone, the Beloved
is already climbing out of the grave.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:29 — 2.0MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

A great ocean moves inside me.

The world swings wide her windows,
looks out,
and waits.

The streets come crawling on all fours
like beggars, like beasts.
The world opens its mouth….

I have been given much.
It can only be received, not taken.

Before what is expected of me, the stillness.

A great ocean moves inside me.

Open the door.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 0:46 — 1.1MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

          Cure the sick; raise the dead;
          cleanse those with a skin disease; cast out demons.
                      —Matthew 10.8

You don’t have the powers of those who wound the realm,
nor those who seem able to save.
But, friend, the One who brought you into life
wove themselves deep into your being
with powers that you from behind your eyes may never see.
Simply in your way of being, if you so choose,
there flows a grace that heals.
It is not yours, but the power of the Beloved.

The forgiveness you have been granted
mends beyond you.
The gentleness with which you are held
spreads like the scent of a flowering lilac.
The grace you are given courage to trust
and to bear casts out demons of fear.

Imagine the mystery that there thrives in your heart
forgiveness that cleanses,
beauty that cures,
love that raises dead.

Don’t long for some great magical powers.
Let the heart of your Lover beat in you.
The blessing whose spring is within you
flows out to the ends of the world.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:44 — 2.4MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

You grow in a crack in the sidewalk,
neither asking nor receiving hospitality.
Spreading your arms out
to what the city will give you of the sun,
reaching your roots down unseen,
patient among slabs and pipes and gravel,
you find a way to nourish yourself.
You gather yourself into this one simple blossom,
not a big one, but yellow in a desert of gray.
And what is it worth?

A guy comes along, distracted,
maybe troubled even, looking down.
He stops, sits on a cement block,
and stares at you. He tilts his head
as if reading something. After a long time
gazing at you he makes a single sound,
“mm,” and something that could be
a smile comes to his face.
He looks at the sky, takes a breath, gets up,
and walks off, somehow different.

You never know.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:29 — 2.0MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

          Go and learn what this means,
          “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”
                       —Matthew 9.13

Jesus quotes Hosea 6.6
(twice, in fact):

God doesn’t want animal sacrifices,
but our hearts,

isn’t interested in our religion,
but in our relationships.

God doesn’t care what we believe,
God cares how we treat people.

Jesus says: choose the religion of Being in Love
over the religion of Being Right.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 0:48 — 1.1MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

Give up your wish
to be a spiritual whiz.
Even the greatest sage
must learn ignorance,
must go out again
and practice not knowing,
address a stone,
innocent of all but the word:
Who are you?
True wisdom is not knowing,
but attending.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 0:31 — 736.9KB)

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

          “Why does your teacher
          eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
                       —Matthew 9.11

There is one table.
All our divisions are a lie.
All our hierarchies are a delusion.
We are all different, and equal.
There is no greater or lesser,
no more or less worthy,
no superior or inferior,
no better or worse.
Not in God’s eyes.
There is no ladder, no pyramid.
Only a circle, where last is first
and first is last.

Our hard work
is to repent of our evil hierarchies,
to be done with comparing,
creating insiders and outsiders.
We do it by coming to the one table,
sitting with our companion sinners,
our beloved siblings, all.
They’re all here, friend, at the table.
Sit with them,
as God sits with you.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:17 — 1.8MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS