Unfolding Light

         “The glory that you have given me
         I have given them.”
                           —John 17.22

God has given you the same glory God gives Christ.
You are not created in error or failure, but in glory.
God’s glory shines in you. God is not served
when you dismiss God’s work, or dishonor the light.

Beneath the grime of our judgments, the slop
and crud of our feelings, invisible even
to the person themselves, is a great magnificence,
humble, often lonely, yearning to be seen.

God’s glory shines in everyone, in every child,
in the demented curmudgeon, the strung-out addict,
the convict and the executioner, and most of all
in the person you meet next. Do you see it?

Like an antique dealer looking past the dust,
a mother loving her child beneath the stains,
learn to see as God, with eyes for glory.
Seeing so will make your own eyes brighter.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Yes, child, I hear you.
I know your suffering.
I know because I am in you, suffering.
And no, it is not fair.
But then, nothing is fair.
I did not create “fair.”
I did not create “deserving.”
You all did.
I created only being—
and, because it is mine, it is being Beloved.
You wonder if I’m here,
listening, responding.
Remember when you fell,
and your mommy held you?
Remember her love,
and how it comforted you
and made it better?
I don’t manage the world.
I don’t push things around,
not bullets or germs or people.
But I love you.
I won’t save you from life’s hurts,
even the awful ones.
But I am here, holding you.
With all my heart I want your wholeness,
and even now in ways you can’t see
healing is happening in your body and soul,
and in the world.
That is me. That is my love.
My dear one, I hear you.
I pray to you, to trust me.
I am holding you.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Abandon your thoughts of thoughts or feelings,
the moods that come and go.

Hope is a practice, an act you can do
even as you mourn, or regret, or dread.

Hope is an act of trust, regardless
of what the future may hold,

trust in the gravity of grace,
the life that sings in all things:

the arctic tern facing an ocean
who lifts her wings, and goes,

the stream that unfurls through the woods,
the roots that reach and curl around stones,

the earth that circles around the sun
one more time, and one more again.

The child who turns to her mother.
The hand of the Healer on every torn thing.

Hope is not wishing but acting.
Birthing. Planting. Getting up.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             He was lifted up,
             and a cloud took him out of their sight.
                                      —Acts 1.9

Heaven is not up, but in.
It’s the heart of things.
That’s where God is.

Jesus was pure love,
the love of God made flesh.
He was resurrected
not as an individual,
but as a community.
We’re his risen body.

The angels at his tomb said “He is not here.”
He is not in any “here;”
he is in us, each of us,
and all of us together.
When Jesus was raised
and came to the disciples
it was not to prove a point,
but to give them his spirit,
so we could be the living body
of the risen Christ.

When he “ascended”
it doesn’t mean he literally
floated up into the sky.
It means he dissolved into us,
like salt dissolving into the soup.
Christ, the love of God made flesh,
is now in us.
We are witnesses—we are the evidence—
of resurrection.
Go.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             They asked him, “Boss, is this the time
             when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”
             He replied, “It is not for you to know…
             But you will receive power
             when the Holy Spirit has come upon you,
             and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem,
             in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
                         —Acts 1.6-8

God, will you please restore democracy now?
Just grab the remote and select the scene
and start at the happy ending, OK?

Nope. No skipping ahead,
no distraction gazing at a future that isn’t here.
Stop wishing.

And stop thinking politics will save you.
God will not jump in, align with any party,
occupy any office. God is love, not a fixer.

God pours power into us, the fire of love.
We are witnesses to that love. There is no plan,
no platform, just this passion for the world.

Even when times are dire (yes, the temple
will soon fall) our only power is love.
But it wakens crowds, turns ships.

Out we go, outward and ever outward,
aflame with tender mercy, beyond all boundaries
till they are no more, and there is only love.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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God, I was trying to write you a prayer
but the ink leaked onto my fingers,
the words all over my hands,
and I tried to wipe them off
but I got the words all over me
and then whole sentences got smudged
onto everything around me,
onto the world and wouldn’t you know it,
there’s no more ink left in my pen,
and I think I’ve lost the prayer entirely,
except I keep seeing it
on every tree and wall and person and headline,
and even the streets are smeared with it,
and even the clouds at times seem
prayerfully inky, and at night—
well, all I see is the ink of my prayers.
But my thoughts
have no more words
so




Amen.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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In beginnings,
in most awful blank,
God speaks noise into harmony,

light where there was none,
Creation out of the mess,
life out of the grave.

Still, always, everything,
even suffering, even death,
is subject to Creation.

Evil decomposes, breaks down
into fear and sorrow and want.
Becomes compost.

Failure is soil for grace.
Weakness offers room for strong roots.
The seed that has died bears fruit.

Love is eternal. It doesn’t die.
It evaporates.
You can’t see where it goes.

Resurrection is not what happens later,
but the revealing of the uncontainable grace
in what is.

Bearers of goodness and mercy,
even in failure and defeat,
you shine in the darkness.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             “Those who love me will keep my word,
             and my Father will love them,
             and we will come to them
             and make our home with them.”
                         —John 14.23

There’s no throne room, but a kitchen,
a table we sit around that we all have scrubbed.
We share meals, and stories, and chores,
the small closeness of a family warmly knit.
The conversation over the bread and wine
is intimate, honest, easy. There are in-jokes,
plans and memories, things we noticed,
dreams, what we’ve gone through together,
thoughts about events of the day. And those looks
across the table, lovers’ gazes, or how parents
watch children they cherish, the wordless nearness
of siblings who love each other. Sometimes
it gets late and we don’t bother to turn on the lights,
we just keep talking in the dark, or sit, silent.
There are mistakes, of course, and arguments,
but always forgiveness. When we go to our rooms,
or out the next day into the world,
it seems we never really leave each other.
The home is inside us.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             Peace I leave with you;
             my peace I give to you.
             I do not give to you as the world gives.
             Do not let your hearts be troubled,
             and do not let them be afraid.
                         —John 14.27

This is the peace of Christ
that will never be taken from you:

You are God’s Beloved.
God is at peace with you, always.

Christ accompanies you,
and will be kind to you. Always.

The Spirit is in you.
You are always free to choose kindness.

Go in peace,
and do not be afraid.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             “Those who love me will keep my word,
             and my Father will love them,
             and we will come to them
             and make our home with them.
                                      —John 14.23

When I’ve hauled away the leftovers
of our making and buying and throwing,
pulled and carted off all the invasives,
plants that seemed easy and harmless,
cleared a space, open and blank,
and fed the soil with the riches
of its own forest floor, and planted
blueberries and milkweed
and other native species, then I wait.
Soon cardinals and monarchs come,
bluebirds and tanagers throng to my garden,
because they are native, and they know
they belong among plants like these.

When I clear my mind of my greed,
haul off all the shoulds and ought tos,
and just wait, pretty soon I notice
the Beloved making nests in me,
the whole divine family of God
moving in, because they belong here.
They have for thousands of years.
It turns out, in the heart of my soul
God is a native species.

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