Author: Steve

             “Do not be afraid;
             from now on you will be catching people.”
                         —Luke 5.10


The way you look at water and see what’s beneath.
The way you know the need and habits
of unseen fish,
live your life by their rhythms,
think about them all the time,
and think they’re beautiful.
The way you gather them, the joy
not just of a fish but a shoal, a netful.
And how, if it’s people you’re gathering,
you’re one of them, not different or above,
brought near to each other in something greater,
a web cast in vast steadiness—
all of us caught up together.
Brought close not just to a boat
but a bosom.
Not recruited, but joined,
woven into the net that catches us all,
returning us to each other.

“Catching up alive,” the Greek means,
not snagged, not used,
but drawn, as we are, in love.
Like caught up in a dance.
Something is breathed into us.

We catch by being caught.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             Simon said, “Boss, we worked all night long
             and caught nothing.
             Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.”
                         —Luke 5.5


A beckoning deeper than words
comes to you, an incoming tide,
a hunger not your own,
a hankering greater than all of us.
Love asks something of you,
innocent, outlandish,
like an expectant child.
You don’t need to know or understand,
you needn’t calculate outcomes
or judge whether you are able,
you only need to be willing.

A great shoal of possibilities
swims just beneath your knowing.
You cast your control of things
into the mysterious waters.
The net of holiness
is not belief or understanding
but willingness.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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            Jesus got into one of the boats,
            the one belonging to Simon,
            and asked him to put out a little way from the shore.
            Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat.
                         —Luke 5.3


A little boat, not grand,
grimy with fish scales,
the patina of sweat and gunk.

Simon didn’t see it coming,
the sudden request to commandeer
his ordinary little boat,

from which the rabbi spoke words
that healed hearts,
that ignited miracles,

Simon noodling the oars
to keep the boat steady,
staring at Jesus’ back.

Was he already feeling out of place,
his boat a divine oracle,
like he shouldn’t be in it?

What was it like, to be inspired,
or convicted, or merely outclassed
in front of all those people?

It would take him longer
than that afternoon’s miracle
to truly get on board.

You never know how the Beloved
may climb into your plain, messed-up life
to birth blessing for strangers,

or how long it might take you
to come to accept
that it ought to be so.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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God is patient;
God is kind;
God is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.
God does not insist on God’s own way;
God is not irritable or resentful;
God does not obsess with wrongdoing,
but rejoices in the truth.
God bears all things,
gives God’s heart to all things,
hopes all things,
endures all things.


                         —1 Corinthians 13.4-7

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             They drove him out of the town,
             and led him to the brow of the hill,
             so that they might hurl him off the cliff.
             But he passed through the midst of them
             and went on his way.
                                      —Luke 4.29-30


He didn’t argue with them,
didn’t fight or outsmart them,
made no clever ninja moves.

In the arms of the breeze
at the cliff edge,
light falling like rain,

before they did something stupid
he gave himself to them fully,
forgiving them already,

which raised a question
that doused their shouting,
that spoke a silence

that cut through their first-stone piety,
that passed through to their midst,
their center,

and finally
they were not
so sure of themselves,

which was not so much
his salvation
as theirs.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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and inconsequential
         I look at my hands.
                  What they have done through the years
is not there,
         it is woven into the warp of history.
                  Generations hold those things now,
hold me.
         I am among them.
                  I am all of them.

I take a breath:
         the sky breathes into me
                  and out of me, I am sky.
My breath leaves me,
         as if I am dead and buried,
                 I am earth.
I am not small,
         I am the whole world,
                  in my part of it.

The heart of Creation beats in me,
         the DNA of the universe
                  furled in the cell of me,
the whole Body present
         in the hand I am,
                  I, the song that contains the world.
Myself is tiny, But I,
         I am vast, if I listen, the whole Mystery
                  in the Word of me.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             When they heard Jesus,
             all in the synagogue were filled with rage.
             They got up, drove him out of the town,
             and led him to the brow of the hill
             so that they might hurl him off the cliff.
                         —Luke 4.28-29


When you are held in the relentless grip
of mercy, you are relentlessly merciful.

To the unmerciful
nothing is more frightening.
They will inflict upon you
their unmercy.

But be at peace.
Even as they lead you to the edge of the cliff,
they cannot destroy you.
You are held in the hands
of the One Who Is Mercy.
If your heart is open,
despite their cruelty
all you will know
is mercy.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             There were many widows in Israel,
             yet Elijah was sent to none of them
             except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon.
             There were also many lepers in Israel
             and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.
                         —Luke 4.25-27

Even our religion is selfish:
we expect it to favor us above all others.

But Jesus opens our eyes to the last who are first,
while we who think ourselves first, get in line.

This is not mere comeuppance,
it’s his insistence that “we” are all of us,

not just some of us.
There are no outsiders, except by our selfishness.

The gospel is most of all for those farthest from God,
and for that part of you most distant.

When God visits the foreign widow in you,
you love the one who lives elsewhere.

When the Beloved blesses what is alien in you
you are merciful toward all who are alienated.

You are saved: not lifted from among the masses,
but returned to them.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Baruch Ata Adonai, Eloheinu Melech HaOlam, Dayan HaEmet.

We remember you,
resting now in the presence of the Holy One:
the six million in Europe,
whose deaths we are sure we would never have allowed.

We remember you not because you are distinct,
but because you are not.

We remember you, the hundreds of thousands
in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
whose deaths we would not have allowed,
except we needed them.

We remember you, the millions of Africans enslaved;
the millions of Native Americans
slaughtered, displaced and “assimilated,”
whose deaths we would never have allowed
except we did.

For a moment we remember those
whose deaths we count as unworthy to remember,
dying even now.

Haunt us, we pray:
teach us to see
before we have to remember.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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In the frozen field the stubble is no cover
from the wind’s teeth.
The snow is too frigid to squeak
though it winces a little.
The cold with its fingernails
reaches into you up to its knuckles.
I would welcome warmth, but first
we need this cold,
to kill the ticks and pine beetles,
to tamp the allergens, to balance things,
once it was to fill the ice houses,
still to skate and ski.
Good and cold.

It toughens you,
not only if you’re from Finland.
If repentance is a refining fire
maybe it’s ice, too:
the six-bladed knives of truth
cutting soul from spirit, joints from marrow,
the shimmering halo of frost
that outlines everything you do so you can’t miss it,
the way you find out what keeps you warm
and what fails. Struggling with a zipper or a key,
the humility of being weak and fragile.
And the weather report that one day you will be
irretrievably cold, and still as ice.
And maybe also the deep forgetfulness of snow
that forgives and beautifies everything
(a grace not cheap, with all that shoveling).
The cold creeps in, murmuring
that all heat is a gift from beyond.
Just think. Out here even the warmth
of your plain, dumb body could save a life.


________________
Weather Report

Cold,
with raging fires.
Expect drought and floods,
day and night,
which also,
like all of us,
will pass.

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