Category: Reflections

         Now there was a great wind…
         but God was not in the wind;
         and after the wind an earthquake,
         but God was not in the earthquake;
         and after the earthquake a fire,
         but God was not in the fire;
         and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.
                  —1 Kings 19.11-12

Juvenile hearts, candy-sated, antennae bruised
by brutal onslaught, have to dial way up to hear,
spoiled by flash and sparkle, useless here.
Here light is too loud, even shadows can shout,
deep places, caves, hearts, canyons, stay empty
to receive. Stones are best, they listen slowly,
no cross talk, thoughtless, simple. Neat.
Of seasoned heart, you tune yourself
to silence, the vastness inlaid in the moment,
the infinite tiny here in this deep sliver
of silence. Here is ocean bottom, farthest heaven,
deepest prayer, free of walls of tongues,
of comprehending noise, of knowing’s lie.
Here the Word escapes the words, enlarges
and becomes beyond, within, the listener
and the silence one. Echoes vanish, waves
defining distance null, the Lover now
so fully present here, and deep,
that nothing need be said.
Being looked at.
Being held.

Tarry, and attend.

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

   June 20, 2019

(In observance of Juneteenth, marking the end of legal slavery in the US, June 19th, 1865)

         Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?”
         He said, “Legion”; for many demons had entered him.
         They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss.
         Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding;
         and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these.
         So he gave them permission.
         Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine,
         and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.
                  —Luke 8.30-33

The demon is “Legion,” a division of the Roman army,
tool of domination, demon of oppression possessing us.
The system’s plague infects the individual.
Our demon is white supremacy, the plague of whiteness.
It chains people, excludes them, wounds them.
It’s not our fault. It’s no one thing, but a Legion.
When racism gets called out we’re frightened.
We who profit from it object. It’s the voice of the demons.

Jesus sends the demons into a large herd of swine,
—kept, surely, to supply the Roman army—
sends them hurtling down, down, down into the sea,
the cosmic abyss, the darkness and void,
the waters where the Spirit of God broods,
where only the voice of God calls forth light.
He subjects the instruments of Empire,
the tools of subjugation, to God’s new creation.
This is Jesus’ work: to exorcize demonic systems,
to subject dominance to the creating grace of God.
Every black body freed is a victory of God.

But we are still possessed by Legion.
We’re not free of the demon yet.
At the edge of our town a tormented voice cries out.
We stagger reluctantly toward Jesus.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
   —June 19, 2019

         People came out to see what had happened,
         and they found the man from whom the demons had gone
         sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.
         And they were afraid.
                  —Luke 8.35
                           
From madness and anguish, self-harm and shame,
from rejection and exile to life among the dead,
from a legion of demons not of his own choosing,
Jesus restores a beloved.
And you? In the graveyard outside your village,
unwhole and frightful, poorly chained,
a wordless voice cries out. Listen… Draw near…

The people are afraid.
Of what? Change? Damage to their profit?
A threat to their settled way of thinking?
The subjection of their values to God’s?
Proximity to such uncontained, uncontrollable power?
The thin, porous boundary between sanity and insanity?—
the possibility that if the man is now like them,
they could be like him?
Yes, at least.
Maybe our fear itself is the demon, the chains, the exile.
When the grace of God tears apart your awful world
and wrenches it into health, what frightens you?
If Jesus were to heal your enemy what would you fear?
If Jesus were to expose your demons
and fling them into the primordial abyss
what would you be afraid of?
You are already afraid. Let the Healer come close,
and name the demon, and reach out a hand…

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
   —June 18, 2019

                           I

Recently some stuff of ours got destroyed.
I’m discovering the innards of grief..
We were planning on giving the stuff away,
so it’s not the stuff I mourn, though it was valuable.
It’s what I’m discovering I need to let go of.
Attachment to what could have been— let it go.
Blame of those who destroyed it— let it go.
Shock at discovering a dark side of someone I trusted — let it go.
Anger at the powerlessness of badly wanting something back
I can’t get back.
Promising myself to stop rehearsing outrage… but I do.
Dashed hopes…work wasted… feeling violated…let it all go.
How many ways desire clings,
how many little pieces there are to letting go.

                           II

As I wrestle with this small angel
I’m mindful of those who have lost more than things:
houses crushed in storms, loved ones dead, war’s terror,
villages destroyed, horrors fled, never to return,
black bodies threatened, lives trafficked, children enslaved,
queer souls on the front porch of hell.
It’s not that I should stop caring about our stuff,
but let it be a door to care for greater things.

So I pray: God, enlarge my grief.
Don’t remove my petty objection;
embed it in your yearning for justice.
Let me mourn more greatly. Change my desires.
Deepen my yearning into empathy and generosity and hope
and the willingness to lose that is love.

__________________ 

Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

―June 17, 2019

Time does not pass; the present
holds steady, and we pass through it.
We do not spend our days; we accrue them.
Our lives are not linear, like a string,
but cumulative, like rings of a tree.

All the memories,
the choices and the unchosen,
feasts and wounds, dry years and wet,
are the rings that make up the tree.

The little boy alone on the hillside is still in there,
the man weeping on the floor, the man bowing,
the eve of one day and the day after,
all I have received and given,

all of it is God growing in me,
none of it would I cut away,
each gift and loss, each success and failure
another ring

as today I give thanks and count one more
that firms me and forms me as I stand
in this moment
and hold new leaves up to the sun.

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

―June 14, 2019

God, you who listen 
so completely and so well,
help me listen today,
listen slowly and openly. 
Help me hear your voice in the silence, 
hear the hear the whisper of grace unfolding,                     
hear your Spirit moving in its dance                       
that does not disturb its deep silence.

Beneath the roar and chatter may I hear you. 
May I speak in a way that does not disturb my hearing.
Speak, Holy One, for your servant is listening. 

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

— June 13, 2019

I AM we, the Infinite,
the Immanent, the Intimate;
the Always and the Present
and the Becoming;
the Lover and the Beloved
and the Love flowing between.

We are the love speaking all out into its being,
mystery for which only gravity has words.
We are the love that knows bitter winters,
morsels shared in hungry places,
separations and disappearances,
the feel in the throat of anguish beyond crying,
the weight of flesh, the delight of flesh,
loveliness drinking your sorrow
and wearing your pain,
joy twining like morning glories
around suffering and loss.
We are the flowing breathing in you,
the becoming ourselves because of you,
creating you to fall in love with you.

We are the One Plus One equals Three,
because we count the plus.
A galaxy of sisterhood,
love-tangled bodies,
tenderness curling around each other,
mother and child issuing from myself,
me and not me and because of our love
something else, beautiful and free.

We include you.

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

    —June 12, 2019

What more did Jesus say
than what we have recorded?
Surely in months of speaking
there were more parables, sayings, teachings?
What more did he say?

Maybe nothing.
Maybe the truth was pure enough,
and his faith,
that he honored it
with pages and pages
of perfect silence.

The Gospels are gracious
to give us no more words,
no explanations
as if multiple words could do
for the singular Word:
only the perfect silence
in which he still sits
with us.

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

 
   —June 11, 2019

The sound of a single chickadee.
The silence afterwards.
The taste of salt.
The incompleteness of my love
for one in whom is my twisted angel,
wrestling me toward gentleness.
Looking at a meadow
longing for my body
to become the grass.
Prayers that nearly form
then move on like clouds.

The clouds.

Everything feeds the fire
of my hunger for you.

I warm myself
by the flames.

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

   —June 10, 2019

We make our way along this way together,
our side-by-sideness a being,
so much of us in the other,
two voices in one harmony,
the going itself our path,
two ways twining, threaded in and out
of hopes and angers,
the bruise and heal become a song,
forgiveness a gravity, pains shared,
dreams carried in another’s inner pocket,
selves emerging in the mirror of the other,
giving mutual birth.
The sound of a river.
Feeling was youth’s energy,
the desert’s spring flash flood;
now deeper currents sing.
Miraculous, though not uncommon,
how marvelous a tapestry is woven of two threads.
Approaching only now the middle age
of love, so much to learn,
looking back in gratitude fades
in the brightness of what may come.
Singing softly, sharing a smile, we walk on.

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

   —June 7, 2019