Category: Reflections

                           Blessed are the poor in spirit…
                                          —Matthew 5.3

Jesus refutes the delusion
that attributes blessing
to the happy, the successful, the strong.
The poor know better.

They’re not blessed because they’re poor,
or heartbroken, or persecuted.
They’re blessed because God blesses them,
no matter what.

Your security, your privilege, your comfort,
your accomplishments, all your merit
are costumes you wear.
Underneath you are naked and needy.

If you wear them
know they are borrowed,
if you are stripped of them
know you are blessed.

All of us
are God’s beloved,
no more than that,
no less.

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

October 26, 2020

My child,
I feel the piercings of your people’s hate.
I feel the anguish of your sorrow,
the weight of despair.
Your cry of rage rises in my own throat.
I hold in my hands the sea of tears,
the single drop of blood.
But child,
my love is sovereign.
I am at work in this world,
redeeming all brokenness
and healing every wound.
Though fearful people fight against me,
and bitter people rage, they are puny
in the face of my love,
my mending of the whole cosmos.
I am making all things new.
See, even within you yourself the storms rage,
and yet the dawn rises.
My child, I am here.
Even as you yearn for peace
and struggle for justice, trust deeply.
I am still creating. I am here.

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

October 23, 2020

                      The greatest commandment is:
                     You shall love the Holy One your God
              And a second is like it:
                      You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
                                          —Matthew 22.38-39

Loving God is the back side of love.
It has a front side.

Loving others
is how you love God.

How you treat people
is your worship.

Neighborliness is prayer.
Justice is piety.

Same love, two sides.
One does not exist without the other.

Love people as if they are God
and love God as you love yourself.

___________________
The Ocean Today
Waves:
crests and troughs,
crashing and receding,
one sea,
two directions.

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

October 22, 2020

                  You shall love the Holy One your God
         with all your heart, and with all your soul,
         and with all your mind.
         And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
                                    —Matthew 22.38-39

Loving One,
may all that I do today be love.
May my faith be this simple,
this urgent,
beyond all doctrine,
beneath all righteousness.
Every act, seen and unseen
an act of love.
Every thought and judgment
considered through the lens of love.
All my doubt and anger
held in the hands of love.
All my fears and desires
held in the hands of love.
Loving One,
enact your love through me.
Held in the hands of your love,
may I love in all I do.

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

October 21, 2020

                      Holy One, you have been our dwelling place
                          in all generations.
             Before the mountains were brought forth,
                          or ever you had formed the earth and the world,
             from everlasting to everlasting
                          you are God.
                                                    —Psalm 90.1-2

I have lived out of my suitcase too much.
I have given a different address.
I’ve stayed in the downstairs apartment,
camped out in the back yard,
announced I’m running away
and circled the block.
Over and over.
But Beloved, you are my home.

I don’t know what else I’m looking for,
why I won’t let myself belong.
But you are my Place.

So I stand at your door,
ready to come in
but instead

I am already in.
In you, Beloved, I am home.

Give me peace to let myself belong.
Give me grace
to take off my shoes
and stay a while

in you.

Breath prayer:    At home … in you

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

October 20, 2020

In the remains of an old orchard –
an apple has fallen

I wipe it off on my sweater –
some grass, a bug or two

It’s not a pristine apple –
some blemishes

They’re not rot or worms –
ugly but they won’t hurt you

I bite into the apple –
eat the whole thing

Eat the blemishes –
that’s how God eats the world

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

October 19, 2020

I am this tree
opening to your light
settling in my branches.

I am this meadow
filling with your autumn rain.
Later something green will rise.

I am this street.
You will walk up and down me all day
and I will become glorious.

I will be your vessel this day,
receiving your word
whispered in these other bodies,

patiently seeking
your glory formed as
these hearts, these lives.

I will look for the gleam
of your treasure
hidden in their fields.

__________________
Weather Report

Downpour,
as warm air, moist with divine presence,
showers us with storms of grace,
and clearing,
air thick with light.

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

October 16, 2020

Here’s a little early Jewish comedy.
Moses says to God,”Show me your ways.”
So God says, “Relax. I’ll be with you.
Moses says, ”Look, if you won’t be with us, just tell me.
I mean that’s our schtick, right? You’re with us, right?”
And God says, “Relax. I will, don’t worry.”
Moses whines even more.
”Yeah, but show me. Let me see your glory.”
God says, “What, are you telling me what to do?
I will be good to whom I will be good.
Now, then. You don’t get to see my face. That’s not in the deal.”
Moses gets to see God’s backside.

Pretty funny, the way we whine,
the way we insist on our own way
even with God.
We’re too busy whining to hear God’s promise
to be with us forever no matter what,
too worked up to notice God here, always.

The irony is that we never actually get to see God’s backside.
God never turns away from us.

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

October 15, 2020

         Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s,
and to God the things that are God’s.
—Matthew 22.21

I am not the emperor’s.
I owe him nothing.
Not my loyalty, my obedience, or my belief;
not my niceness, not my polite agreement,
not even my cooperation.
He does not own my hope;
and can’t even lay hands on it.
He does not rule my freedom,
my power or my joy.
His is not the truth,
nor the way, nor the life.
The emperor, desperate bully
gentlemanly dressed,
has no claim on me at all.
I am wholly and irretrievably God’s.
No one can snatch me from the Beloved,
the emperor’s loyalists can’t contain me,
nor can his proud boys drive me
from the cause of justice.
I belong wholly to God,
who by God’s own gracious choice
belongs to the poor.
Today I freely and joyfully
give myself to God,
and God alone.

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

October 13, 2020

…give to God what is God’s.
—Matthew 22.21

Loving One,
I confess: all day long,
and even in my quiet morning prayer,
I am obsessed with myself:
what I have to do:
roles to play, tasks to accomplish,
the way I “ought” to be.

Instead I surrender to you all thought of myself,
and gaze on what you are doing in me.

I am not the Movie of Myself.
I am the hushed theater where you appear.
May I clear the stage
for you to tell your story,
and hold the silence in which you sing.

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

October 13, 2020