Category: Reflections

             Blessed are you who are poor,
                          for yours is the realm of God….
             But woe to you who are rich,
                          for you have received your consolation.
                         —Luke 6.20, 24

A whole world of grace,
a realm of love,
another dimension
that this one inhabits
but can’t see,
an energy field like gravity, like magnetism,
God’s intimate presence
and fervent desire for your well-being,
the faithful accompaniment of the Beloved,
and the great body of all who love—
all of this is given to you.
This whole realm.
It’s yours.

Unless your hands are full
of something else,
drawn to other treasure.

Blessed are you who are ready to receive it.
woe to you who sit alone
with your pile of coins,
your great power,
satisfied.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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I said:“Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the Mighty One, the Supreme of all!” Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.” Then I heard the voice of the Holy One saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!”
                         —Isaiah 6.5-8

The headlines are grim.
Things do not look good for the nation;
you rightly foresee doom.
You yourself are also a mess,
a liar among liars.

Yet a hot coal of love
has singed your unworthiness away.
Now you are sent: given to this world,
your lips glowing with that grace,
to bear that forgiving flame,
to bear the love which—
to ashes with unworthiness—
chooses people.
You are sent to bear peace in the chaos,
blessing despite the riot, hope in the gloom.

Your words will not sway history;
the collapse will come. But speak
the Word of love in the time of danger,
and they will welcome your words of love
among the ruins.
                               Speak, then.
Don’t let the tragedy discourage you:
it’s the reason you are sent.
Amid the shouting and weeping,
proclaim in word and deed
the unrelenting gentleness of God.
You are sent into the falling darkness
to be light on the long, long path home.

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