Unfolding Light

Pretend it’s distant. Blood in the rubble.
Clothing under chunks of cement. A toy. Half a toy.
Scattered shards of mirror, showing sky.

A people being turned to dust we try not to see.
Goodness like buildings collapsed, mile after mile.
In the broken mirror a mother, wordless, gazing.

Desolation that speaks of a desolation.
A child, dazed, starving,
loved. We think they can’t see us,

humanity wasting away. A famine of decency.
Remnants of righteousness, almost buried.
A winged figure sifts through our ruins.

We don’t dare pick up the mirror.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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As if prayer is something you go to
like a place or a meeting, and not
ruin, or
                  seed.

As if prayer is something you can be in
like a room or a mood, and not
poverty, or
                   love.

As if prayer is something you do,
like speaking, and not
what happens to you, like
                  sickness, or surprise.

As if prayer is something you get up from
like a chair or a chore, and not
sex or
                  a grave.

No, let my prayer storm into me,
or digest me, or dawn in me,
from which I rise risen,
                                      scathed.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Coastal marshes are gentle places,
nothing dramatic: soft sediment laid down,
tender grasses nodding in the breeze,
holding hands. Egrets wade,
turtles bask and fish lurk. It’s pretty quiet.
There are no stone bulwarks, but in a storm
the marsh protects the land
with an invisible strength.

Kindness is like that.

The apple tree by the roadside offers its gifts.
It asks nothing, makes no exchange,
fortifying whoever eats of its fruit.

Kindness is like that.

The scent of lilacs, that transgresses barbed wire,
the beauty of music you can hear even in riot gear,
an act of generosity defying all accounting,
a small seed that cracks sidewalks.
A little song that stays.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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My frightened little soul,
an escaped convict,
wants to run from house to house,
even to people I don’t know,
banging on every door,
pleading,
Forgive me, please!

While God walks calmly
through the neighborhood
of my soul, enters every place,
not even knocking—
whether a door opens or not—
walks right in to the darkness,
lights a candle, sets a table, calls out
Mercy lives here.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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A spider has hung a wheel of spokes
across impossible empty space between twigs,
and now works her way around the lines.
She touches her abdomen to the thread
and moves a pace and touches again,
adding a length to the thread, touching,
on and on, in ever widening circles.
All of this comes from inside her.
I don’t know how she sees with her legs,
thinks with her eyes, knows with something
we don’t know. The circles are perfect.
Like Bach sitting down to the weekly cantata,
she holds the magic, the mysterious energy
between the idea of a web and a web.

After a long time there it is, trembling slightly
in the curious breeze, a face of the world.
She is not done being patient, or course.
She sits and waits.

A windblown branch falls, tears through the web.
Little shreds hang from the twigs
like tiny prayer flags. Nothing, really.
Without much of a pause she strings a thread
between impossible twigs and begins again.

O, spider God, bless us
in our impossible spaces.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Have you noticed the pheromones
the world is sending out to you?

Not wanting you to save it,
just to fall in love with it.

Tiny violets reassure the hillside
which every winter has been tormented by ice.

When the dam is removed after a century, salmon
already know their way to their ancestors’ birthplace.

The jazz of the meadowlark.
Laughter, even at funerals.

Such things are the rope and bucket
that haul you up out of your dank well.

The smell of lilacs is meant for bees
but it comes to you.

If you make friends with crows
they give you gifts.

Downtown a kid you don’t know
smiles at you anyway.

It’s the world’s way of letting you know
it wants to stay married to you.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light www.unfoldinglight.net
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When dread for the world grows heavy,
or despair throws its rough sack over your head,
ponder something beautiful.
Let terrible events fade to the backdrop,
a dark peripheral blur.
Look for life, even the lowest.
The impetuous tuft of grass in the sidewalk,
and how it keeps coming back, reaching for light,
spreading its arms with innocent joy.
The bug in the corner of your prison cell,
how, by grace, it finds food.
If it is possible here, it is also elsewhere.
Even under the boots of tragedy, goodness persists,
in a billion places across the earth.
Keep your eye on the star, not the darkness.
In the room, mourners beat the laundry of their grief.
Outside the window a pair of cardinals feed each other.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             Ask, and it will be given to you;
             search, and you will find;
             knock, and the door will be opened for you.
                         —Luke 11.9

God is not a vending machine,
             but the Mystery is abundantly generous.

Jesus doesn’t promise that we get what we want.
             He invites us to question, to seek, to explore.

Ask questions, even doubtful ones;
             in wondering find blessing, and gifts.

Eyes open, look for the grace that is always here
             and you will find.

God is not the secret behind the door;
             God is the door.

Always beckoning. Seeking you. Asking: knock.
             Always opening.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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When the night is thick
and you can’t see,
sometimes
you have to close your eyes
to see the light.

Because it’s inside you.

It’s been there forever,
since the beginning of time.
The first “Let there be light”
included yours.

It’s deep down.
Deeper than your breathing,
deeper than your nerve impulses.
If you are in a coma
it’s still there.

It’s tiny, a pinpoint, like a star,
yet it lights up everything around you.
It’s not light for your eyes,
but something else.
You learn to walk by that light,
breathed into you,
and to lighten your world.

Of course you are not the only one.
Together, in the dark,
we are a constellation,
a galaxy of grace.

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

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

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