Category: Reflections

             “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.
             No one will snatch them out of my hand.”
                         —John 10.28

Because, dear one,
my hand is my heart,
sinew-bound you are,
flesh of my flesh,
not just in my hand but of it,
inseparable.
In your farthest removes
you are still held,
in your wildest temptation,
your awfullest sin,
your worst failure, you are mine.
In your worst sickness,
your deepest depression,
your toughest seizure,
your foulest addiction,
you belong to me,
and they have no grasp of you.
On the street, in handcuffs,
on the witness stand, or denied the stand,
in the torture prison,
detained, deported, disappeared—
you are here in my hand,
heart-held, heard, indivisible
from my deepest love.
In the face of hell itself
I’ve got you.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.”
                                         —John 10.28

This doesn’t mean you’ll go on
for a long time after you die.
(It’s life that’s eternal, not you.)
It means right now you are part
of a mystery that is infinitely deep,
given life that can’t be taken from you.
You are part of the Body of God’s love
which can’t be killed.
Love doesn’t die; it evaporates,
still present in another form.

Love is the Word that was in the beginning
and ever shall be, that creates all things.
When you love you are part
of the original “Let there be light,”
that lives on even after the darkness is gone.
Even in failure, love accomplishes its purpose.

This promise is not only for comfort,
but for courage.
Love, then. Let nothing stop you.
It will matter forever.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             “My sheep hear my voice.
             I know them, and they follow me.”
                                      —John 10.27

Beloved,
give me grace today
to listen for your voice,
to know the voice of mercy,
the call of delight,
and to distinguish it from the voice of fear,
the voice of resentment or reaction.
Help me listen for the voice that knows me,
the presence that honors my soul,
that delights in me, that magnifies me.
Give me grace to trust
the voice of love,
and to follow.

Breath prayer:
                         Listen … follow

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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         These are they who have come out of the great ordeal;
         they have washed their robes
         and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
                                      —Revelation 7.14

In the shadowed valley
despite all cruelty
they have submitted
to a mighty kindness,

opened themselves
to a breath flowing
through them for others,

an eternal river
that will find its way,
even through death.

It has torn much away—
for some their very bodies—
but the life can’t be stopped,
this river that bears them in love.

They have been brought through.
They are changed.
There is nothing they cannot touch.
Though they seem to have lost everything,
and appear torn—dead, even—
the light is still in them,
and the breath, and the song,
singing.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             “As a youngster you would put yourself together
             and go where you wanted.
             But as you mature you reach out.
             You let others work with you.
             You allow yourself to be led
             to places you wouldn’t have chosen.”
                                      —John 21.18 (my version)

It’s how you grow in faith.
It’s how you mature as a person.
It’s how you deal with getting old.

You get over thinking your life is about you.
You open yourself to the pull
of your belonging to a greater body.

You tend to relationships.
You let others be your center, your purpose.
Your goal is not having, but conveying.

You give up trying to be in control.
You allow yourself to be led.
You entrust yourself to grace.

You are willing to find yourself
in new places—scary, even—with courage.
Because you are guided. Accompanied. Held.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
                         —Acts 9.4

Some call what happened to Saul
on the way to Damascus his conversion.
Something in him got changed,
even his religious outlook.
But really it was a call:
an awakening to a new purpose,
guided and empowered by the Spirit of love,
rooted in a sudden awareness
of God present in those who are persecuted,
awareness of the suffering of others,
and his own part in that.

We don’t need some dramatic experience
with light and voices (and no horse, please:
that’s in Caravaggio, not in Scripture).
Listen for the cries of the world,
and surrender yourself to its healing.
Listen for the beckoning of the Beloved,
and look inward.

Breath prayer:
                          Listen    …    look

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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              Jesus came and took the bread
             and gave it to them
             and did the same with the fish.
                                      —John 21.13

Jesus had a distinctive way of sharing bread:
taking, blessing, breaking, giving.

He did it at the Last Supper,
but it wasn’t the last.

He’d done it at the Everlasting Lunch,
feeding 5000.

And now he does it at the First Breakfast,
an Easter breaking of the fast of the cross.

Resurrection is escape from every confine,
even of time and space.

In every meal, every morsel,
Jesus is so present he’s edible.

The Beloved is here, now,
though we seldom dare ask, “Who are you?”

You don’t need to ask
if you taste.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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This vernal pool is all that still remains
of what was once a bank of snow piled deep,
but has been settled now by warmth and rains,
a season laid down to its final sleep.
Its only ornaments are tiny frogs
that soon will leave, and leaves along its floor.
It’s nothing grand among the forest bogs;
it’s not a pond: a puddle, and no more.
It won’t amount to much, as people think;
it won’t join in the river to the sea,
but sink among the roots where birches drink:
a humble life without a legacy—
and yet it won’t be gone, though now unseen:
no, look above, into the burgeoning green.

___________________
Weather Report

Vanishing,
as today’s ice becomes
a brook, which
becomes the sea,
which returns as snow,
clearing overnight.
Expect all in higher elevations
to fall, but growth to continue
well into the next eon.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach,
             but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus.
             Jesus said to them, “Children, you have no fish, have you?”
                        —John 21. 4-5

After the bewildering overload
of horror and miracle,
the cross, the risen Jesus,

what could we do but return
to something safe—the sane,
the familiar, the predictable?

We went fishing. Something
we knew, what we were good at,
wise elders of the trade.

The reassuring rhythm of the boat,
the conversation of wood knocking on wood,
the friendly murmuring of the water,

the patient interval
as we circle the boat around the net,
then the satisfying pull—

but we could tell right away,
the disappointing ease
of hauling in empty nets.

Nothing. All night, through
the darkness of our certainty,
our confident expertise—nothing.

Near dawn a stranger called
from the shore, “Hey kids,
you got nothing, huh?”

Kids. Like we didn’t know
what we were doing.
Like we were beginners.

He told us where there were fish,
and he was right, and we were
caught up in a new net again,

still learning, at the feet of one
who said to enter the world of God
as children, that masters of resurrection

are always beginning again.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             “We must obey God rather than any human authority.
             The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus…
             and we are witnesses to these things.”
                                      —from Acts 5.29-32

Who commands your heart?
Despite what pledges you may make,
whose voice do you obey?

The demon fear that haunts
your inward house but can’t create?
The shyster shame that sells you chains
for the price of what others think?
The Emperor, who outlaws awe and mercy,
who threatens fear and shame,
who promises, if you but obey,
a kingdom he doesn’t have?

They loom like shadows
but they aren’t real, they’re only shadows,
The Risen One, this love that burns in you,
this life that has been given you, is more present,
more powerful, more real, than they.

Obey the voice that calls you into life,
bear witness to this grace,
and let the others go.
Whatever pain they cause you
will be completely overcome
by the One who gives you, even out of death,
new life that can’t be harmed.

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