Unfolding Light

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
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Loving womb of us all
at the heart of all being,
we your sunflowers turn always to you.
Your hope unfurls among us,
a dream we can’t imagine but can be.
Each breath is you.
You are in this present moment;
you free us to be in this present moment,
and to free others.
Transform our desires into love alone.
Guide us free of the power of fear.
Amazing: all this universe,
and all its energies, and all its beauty
are yours, who are infinite, yet here.
May we be so mindful always.




________________
See several paraphrases of the Lord’s Prayer here.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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The cells in your body love what they do.
Nerve synapses adore each other, holding hands,
sharing secrets all the time.
Your glands, twinkle in their eye, distribute their gifts.
Your muscles don’t move from duty, but joy.
Your lungs, even when troubled, love the air
and love passing on its riches.
White blood cells sweep the streets
because they love everyone who lives there.
Ligaments and tendons hang on
and when severed long for each other.
See when you’re cut how skin reaches for skin,
tissues embrace like lovers.
The members of the body care for one another.
They gather at each other’s sickbeds.
When the village is not well all its citizens pitch in,
each doing their best for the whole,
because they love each other.
Beat by beat your heart speaks in you
—let it be your life—
                                   Oh Yes. Oh Yes. Oh Yes….

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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You may not believe in angels—
but one day you’re standing
on the subway, being lurched,
pole against your chest,
and you look down the car
and there’s a scrap of kid,

and suddenly some love, unbidden,
flames out from you, and in a fit of light
you see the wayward child
as a gift of God
and you shine with devotion.

Or you notice someone’s hand at the post office,
old and weathered as tree roots,
and for an instant it seems
the hand of wisdom,
or suffering redeemed,

and something like a wing
unfurls just a little from you,
something like radiance,
heaven hinted,
issues forth from your chest
and recedes, and is gone.

You don’t have to have an opinion about it,
but you felt it, and you know.

You don’t have to believe
in any more angels
than the one you are.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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I don’t have to save, but I can attend.
To protect the tender ones,
heal the wounded, vindicate the gentle,
or to disturb or make righteous noise,
I am able, with what I have.

My despair (how the Emperor counts on it!)
wants me to believe I lack the power.
But what I am given is enough.
As among daffodils that brighten the hillside
in late spring snow or freezing rain,
miraculous powers are already granted.

Busy as Martha or still as Mary,
even the smallest butterfly-wing muscle
of compassion is all I am called to use.

No one knows the power of small acts
or stillness,
the millions holding the world together
by the thread of their prayers.

This world is not aching for superheroes,
but roadside daffodils.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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They take the tender part of you,
                        in his T shirt and flip flops, confused.

That it’s not you,
                        shoved, with slurs, trying to stay standing.

The ligament between your hearts,
                        handcuffed among guns and face shields.

That little tearing sound as when puling a weed,
                     herded out into the street.

Irreversible loss, a death,
                        gazing into the cave of the van door.

Your hope, with those questioning eyes,
                        stuffed into the van.

That everything will be all right
                        off to a concentration camp somewhere.

Who, exactly, needs first
                        to stop what they’re doing?

Every time you are taken
                        you have less to lose.

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:11 — 1.6MB)

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